


Into the Psych Ward

by GenericUsername01



Series: personal favorites [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mental Illness, Psych Ward, Self Harm, Substance Abuse, They play A LOT of chess in this, and unhealthy behaviors, first two chapters were written while i was actually in a psych ward, just generally a lot of potentially triggering stuff, obviously, pretty much the only thing to do there, referenced abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-20 07:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Jim Kirk gets admitted to a psych ward.





	1. Admission

**Author's Note:**

> I have been institutionalized four times in the past year, so I know what I'm talking about. I wrote the first two chapters of this while in a psych ward because I project my issues onto fictional characters as a thinly-veiled coping mechanism. I'm going to give this whole fic a blanket warning for some not-nice ways of talking about the mentally ill and also suicide ideation. If you think you have any chance of being triggered by that, please think twice before reading this.

It was his nineteenth birthday, but more importantly, it was the nineteenth anniversary of George Kirk’s death and it was a huge fucking deal.

There was a ceremony.

Jim stood stiffly in his suit next to a crying Winona and a solemn-faced Frank. Sam was off on Deneva with Aurelan, way too far away to come for a one-day ceremony, the lucky bastard.

Not that he would come anyway. He hadn’t been to Earth since that last horrible day when he was sixteen.

The speaker talked about what a great sacrifice George had made, what a noble, heroic death he had had, how his memory, his honor, his valor would live on for centuries to come. How he should be an inspiration to us all.

Inspiration to us how, Jim wondered numbly. All the guy did was die. Everyone dies. He just happened to find an especially dramatic way to go out.

Afterwards, people came up to them to talk. Thank them for their sacrifice. Enthuse about what a great man George had been. Shake their hands and pat themselves on the back for consoling the noble, wounded family.

They went home.

Frank got out the beers for him and Winona.

Winona rarely drank, but she always did on Jim’s birthday. It was the saddest day of the year for her. For all of them, if Jim was being honest. Even Frank hated it.

Jim knew better than to stick around for what was bound to happen next. He slung on his leather jacket, hopped on his hoverbike, and headed for the nearest bar.

You don’t even need a fake ID if you give a really good blowjob to the right person.

He spent the evening flirting with the room at large and grinding up against an Andorian. He got plied with free drinks and returned the favor with interest. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

He drank until he was numb and drove his hoverbike to a park so he could be alone. He was feeling too much. Way too much, and all of it in his head. He needed something physical. Something real, something visceral, something to ground him. He felt like he was spinning out of control, and it wasn’t just the alcohol.

Was this seriously his life? Driving drunk on his birthday and having sex with strangers who didn’t give a shit? He didn’t have anybody who did. He laughed bitterly. He didn’t have anybody who gave a shit about him.

He had half a thought to go home and sleep it off, but decided against it. Winona would probably still be up, teary-eyed and a little bit drunk. Or a lot a bit drunk, if he was honest. It was his birthday, after all. A special occasion. 

She would mistake him for George. She always did nowadays. It had started years back, when he was just a preteen, and then, only once every few years. But now it was every year. And every year, he looked more like George Kirk.

Last year, she had started crying, screaming and throwing things, asking why he had left her alone with two boys to raise, why he had to go and die. Then she tried to kiss him.

Sam was lucky. He had figured it out early on and left before everything went to shit. Before Frank took Jim to Tarsus. Before he grew up too much and started looking like his dad. He and Jim were practically identical, so now Jim realized that he must have gone through the same shit and seen the writing on the wall and gotten out before things got out of hand.

Lucky bastard.

He couldn’t wait until he actually reached the old man’s age and became an exact replica of him. Maybe Winona would do something special to mark the occasion, like hit him or tell him to go die a second time.

And maybe he would.

Maybe he would.

It didn’t matter. 

It did not fucking matter.

God. What was he doing? Why was he still doing this? Still pretending that he could live this life? Still pretending that this was tolerable? Why did he bother? Who was he keeping up appearances for? His mom? God, even she didn’t believe him. He was miserable and everyone knew it.

So what was he doing then? What the fuck was doing? Why was he living this life and pretending he cared? How long was he going to keep it up for? How long was he willing to live like this? What was he living for?

What was he living for?

_What was he living for?_

He wracked his brain and he wracked his brain and he sat back against a tree with tears streaming silently down his face and he couldn’t go home but god, he couldn’t go on either. He was feeling too much. Way too much, and all of it in his head. He needed something physical. Something real, something visceral, something to ground him.

He had a switchblade in his pocket. He took it out with fumbling fingers and flicked the blade open, staring at it. It was gleaming, reflective, in the moonlight. Beautiful and deadly.

He couldn’t wouldn’t shouldn’t had to needed—

He dragged the blade quicksilver fast across his wrist, before he could think. Oh god, it hurt like a bitch. It was just what he needed. He lined the blade back up to the slit and ran it across again. Blood bubbled up in a thin scarlet stream. It pooled in the cut and ran off the side, running down his wrist in rivulets. He cut again, sawed into it, rocking the knife against tender flesh.

He cut again and again and again and  _again._

Blood dripped down the length of his arm, into his sleeve, staining it where the drops caught at the elbow. It was sticky and warm and pooled in dark globs along the cut on his wrist, congealing already. He didn’t let it dry for a second, digging the knife right back in with fervor.

He dragged the knife and hissed in pain sharply. God, it hurt. It  _hurt_. He relished it, knowing he deserved every second of it, every ounce of that pain. It was the one thing in life he did deserve. The last thing he would ever deserve.

Hopefully.

God, hopefully.

He dug in even sharper, and it was so dark out, darker than night was supposed to be, dark like—

* * *

 

He woke up in a hospital bed.

Fuck.

He was hooked up to a ton of wires, an IV line dripping blood, and his left wrist was bandaged in a bright pink wrap.

He groaned and sat up, the monitors above the biobed pinging as he did so and drawing in a nurse from outside the room, who went to get his doctor to do his assessment. 

It took forty minutes. She asked every question under the sun.

“Do you have any history of physical abuse?”

Getting into the hard stuff right off the bat, apparently. Jim hesitated. He could lie or he could tell the truth. He was a legal adult now. He burned through his money like tinder and had no savings to fall back on and the only place he could possibly move out to would be a homeless shelter, and plus, he was a legal adult now. It didn’t matter if he was still completely dependent on Winona and Frank and he had no other options. There would be no foster care for him. There would be no fairy godmother sent from the government swooping in to save him and take him someplace better.

No. He was on his own. And he would have to continue living with Frank for at least a while longer, until he got on his feet. So it was best not to make things any worse than they had to be.

“No.”

“Sexual abuse?”

It was nothing he hadn’t consented to. Hell, it had been his idea some of those times. “No.”

“Emotional abuse?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had a suicide attempt before?”

“Uh, one time I drove a car off a cliff, but I jumped out before I went over with it. Does that count?”

“We’re looking more for instances that required hospitalization. Like if you took a bunch of pills but then an ambulance came and you had to get your stomach pumped. Anything like that?”

“No.”

The doctor marked that down on the chart.

“Are you hearing any voices or seeing anything that isn’t really there?”

“No.”

“Are you having any thoughts to hurt yourself right now?”

“No.”

“Have you had them in the past?” 

He glanced at the bandage wrapped around his wrist. “Well, yeah.”

“Have you been having them for a while?”

“I guess.”

“How long?”

“Since I was twelve.” 

The doctor’s eyebrows raised. “What medications are you taking?”

“None.” Again, with the eyebrow raise.

“Are you a smoker?”

“No.”

“Do you drink alcohol?”

He was still a little bit drunk, to be honest, but not drunk enough to be so stupid as to admit it. “No.”

The doctor looked at him. “We’re going to have to test your blood and urine, you do realize this, right?”

No. “Alright, fine. I drink sometimes.”

“About how many drinks would you say you have in an average week?”

“…Maybe ten.”

“And have you ever used illicit drugs?”

Did anyone ever say yes to that? He didn’t use often enough to actually have anything still in his system, so—“No.”

“Are you sexually active?”

“Yeah, very,” he said with a leer. The doctor was thoroughly unimpressed.

Why did he do that.

“How many partners would you say you have on an average month?”

“Uhh, maybe nine?”

“Do you ever have unprotected sex?”

“No. Well, I mean, rarely. Almost never.”

She gave him a stern, disapproving look.

“Why are you here today?”

“I slit my wrist.”

She set down her pen. “I thought you said you had never attempted suicide before.”

“I didn’t! I wasn’t—I wasn’t  _trying_ to kill myself, I just sorta wanted to die and I started cutting and I… cut too far, I guess.”

Ten minutes passed in silence while the doctor checked off additional boxes and copied over information. Finally, she rose.

“The assessment’s finished. A nurse will be in shortly to run your tests and then you’ll be admitted once we confirm a bed is ready and the doctor has cleared you for admittance.”

“Wait, a bed ready? What do you mean by that?”

“You’ve been pink-slipped, Mr. Kirk. You’re going to the psych ward, and I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter.”

* * *

 

‘Shortly’ turned out to be three fucking hours later, during which time Frank and Winona came to visit.

There is singularly nothing worse in this world than trying to make small talk with your parental figures while waiting to be admitted to a psych ward.

Winona wiped a stray tear from her eye, quickly, like she didn’t want them to see. Jim swallowed down a lump in his throat.

“Why’d you do it, Jim?” Frank asked.

“What do y—What sort of question is that? Why do you think I did it?”

“You giving me attitude, boy? ‘Cause if you are, I promise you, you’ll be in this hospital for an entirely different reason.”

“No,” he said.

“No, what?”

“No, sir,” he ground out.

“That’s right,” Frank said, satisfied.

“Why  _did_  you do it, Jim? What were you thinking?” Winona asked.

Jim closed his eyes.

“I was thinking I wanted to die,” he said flatly.

“Why?” Winona croaked.

“Why do you think, Mom? Why do you think?”

“I don’t know!” she said. “For the life of me, I don’t know! I can’t imagine why—“ She shook her head. “How could you do this to me, Jim? What you almost put me through, for a second time… Did you even think about how this would affect me?”

His jaw dropped.

“Are you—are you kidding me? I just  _slit my wrist_ , and your first concern is how this affects you? Are you kidding me? Are you  _fucking_  kidding me?!”

“Hey! Show some respect to your mother,” Frank barked.

“Show some respect to me! This is bullshit—!“

“You better watch your mouth—“

“Or what, Frank? You’ll kill me? Fuckin’  _do it_  already.”

He leaned in close and dropped his voice menacingly low. “I’ll make sure you never get out of that nuthouse, kid. You’re fucking batshit crazy, and everybody knows it. I’m gonna have them pump you so full of drugs you forget your own name.”

The moment froze in ice, crystalline with tension.

“Fuck you,” Jim hissed. “Fuck you so much, Frank.”

* * *

 

Two EMTs came in with a stretcher reclined in a somewhat seated position. The nearest hospital with a bed available was forty-five minutes away by aircar. They strapped Jim into the stretcher with two seatbelts crisscrossing over his chest and additional belts around his waist, knees, and ankles.

He came this close to making a quip about why don’t they just put him in a straightjacket already but then he realized they actually might.

The ride to the hospital was tense and silent. Jim really didn’t have anything to say to the EMTs, and apparently they didn’t have much to say to him either.

They arrived, finally, and the stretcher was unloaded and wheeled into the hospital. They rolled Jim into an elevator and had another tense, silent ride. 

The doors opened and Jim was in the psych ward.


	2. Breakfast

They took his clothes and made him change into papery blue hospital scrubs and gray tube socks with grips on them. The scrubs were a size too big and hung off him baggily. He had to roll up the pant legs.  
  
If they were orange instead of blue, he would look like a regular convict. He certainly felt like one.  
  
“You’re going to have a roommate,” a nurse told him, leading him to his assigned room. “He’s Vulcan.”  
  
It sounded almost like a warning. Or an apology.  
  
The room was sparse and every drawer and cupboard had a lock on it, bolted shut. The nurse unlocked one and threw his clothes, shoes, and belt in, then locked it right back up. Two hospital beds were shoved in opposite corners of the room with a single thin blanket on each. There was a small bathroom with only a curtain for a door, and the curtain didn’t even go all the way to the floor. The room had a window: narrow, unopenable, shatter-proof.  
  
They had given him an info sheet. Several, actually. One had listed all the rules: no violence, no electronics, no relationships with other patients, and no offensive language. Jim had asked if that meant saying the f-word would get him kicked out, and promptly tried it, only to receive a dry look from the nurse.  
  
Another sheet had listed his rights, which were shockingly few unless he signed in, which he quickly did. Turns out they can’t force him to take any meds—even though he had been pink-slipped—if he self-admitted. Frank had been wrong, dead wrong. They couldn’t give him a single damn drug without his signed consent.  
  
Being an adult had some perks after all.  
  
It was an acute treatment ward. The average stay was eight days.  
  
The Vulcan was sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, palms up and eyes closed.  
  
“What’s he in here for?” Jim whispered to the nurse.  
  
“I can’t tell you that.”  
  
The door clicked shut behind her.  
  
The Vulcan’s eyes blinked open.  
  
“Oh, hey. Uh, sorry for disturbing you. I didn’t think you would hear.”  
  
“Vulcan hearing is superior to that of humans.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”  
  
“It is no matter. There is no offense where none is taken.”  
  
“Ah. Okay.”  
  
He stood there a bit awkwardly.  
  
“So, um. Which bed is yours?” Both were made up perfectly, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think neither had been slept in.  
  
“You may choose whichever bed you like.”  
  
“I don’t wanna take your bed from you.”  
  
“You would not be. I have used neither of the beds.”  
  
“You haven’t slept since you got here?”  
  
“Vulcans require little sleep.”  
  
“Yeah, but you still require some sleep. When was the last time you actually got any?”  
  
“40.82 days ago.”  
  
“You haven’t slept in forty days?! Do the nurses know?”  
  
“No. I have been refraining,” he said. Then, suddenly desperate, “Do not tell them.”  
  
Jim paused. That single sentence held more emotion than he had ever seen a Vulcan express. “Okay. I won’t. If you can give me one good reason why.”  
  
“They would give me sleeping pills.”  
  
“It sounds like you need them.”  
  
“One of the side effects of sleeping pills is intensely vivid and realistic dreams. Or nightmares,” he said stiffly, meeting Jim’s gaze but keeping his eyes carefully blank.  
  
“Oh,” he said. “I won’t tell. I promise. But you should try to get some sleep, okay? I can wake you up if you have a nightmare.”  
  
“You would do that?”  
  
“Yeah, of course.”  
  
“…Thank you.”  
  
Jim grinned. “No problem.”

* * *

A tone sounded loudly on the room’s intercom, jolting Jim from bed.  
_  
“Attention Coping Center patients!” a voice called shrilly. “Breakfast has arrived on the unit. This is a friendly reminder that we do not hold breakfast trays past 8:00 and if you do not come out to eat by then, then sorry for your loss.”  
  
Some snickering. “Sorry for your loss? Seriously?”  
  
“Oh, shut up.”_  
  
The intercom cut out.  
  
Jim groaned and rolled out of bed. “Did you sleep?” he asked groggily, only to find that his roommate was still asleep, curled up in a little ball in his blanket. Jim smiled fondly.  
  
He wandered out into the huge day room that connected all of the patients’ room and doctors’ offices, making up the majority of the unit. He waited in line at the wheeled cart to get his tray and took a seat across from a scruffy and decidedly antisocial-looking man sitting alone.  
  
The man scowled at him. “Go away.”  
  
“No,” Jim said with a smile.  
  
The man glared and got up to move his tray. Jim followed him to another table.  
  
“What part of ‘go away’ don’t you understand, kid?”  
  
“You need a friend,” Jim said, pointing with his fork.  
  
“No I do not.”  
  
“Yes you do.”  
  
“Lord above, I do not!”  
  
“See, that just proves that you do.”  
  
He rolled his eyes, seeming to give up and decide to ignore Jim until he went away. Jim grinned, considering that a victory.  
  
He was being tolerated.  
  
“My name’s Jim,” he said.  
  
The man determinedly did not reply, digging into his food forcefully.  
  
“Anyway I like space and science and old books and annoying people—you, specifically. It’s actually what I was put on this earth to do. My destiny. My god-given purpose. My reason for being. My—“  
  
“My god, do you ever shut up?”  
  
“Nope,” Jim said happily. “Gonna tell me your name any time soon?”  
The man scowled. “No.”  
  
“Alright. I can wait. I have a brother named Sam and a mom named Winona and an uncle who we’ll call Asshat. One time when I was twelve I robbed Riverside Bank of five million credits, stole a police car, and drove it straight off a cliff to confuse their scanners. I jumped out at the last second and rolled and hid down in this cave where they couldn’t detect me until the police passed by. Then I built my own spaceship from scrap and went off, bought a planet, and lived like a king.”  
  
“Oh really,” the man said dryly.  
  
“Uh-huh. And I was a hero on that planet. The breadbasket of the Federation, they called us. I put that place on the map.”  
  
“Then how come I never heard of it, o boy king?”  
  
“Oh, it was real backwater, but trust me, it was important.”  
  
“Was?”  
  
Shit.  
  
“Is. I said was ‘cause, y’know, I’m not running it anymore, obviously.”  
  
“Obviously, right,” he said. “And why is that?”  
  
“Well,” Jim leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head. “You see, it’s a funny story. Three years into my awesome reign, a _demogorgon_ attacked the planet!”  
  
“The fuck is a demogorgon?”  
  
“This big huge monster thing. Anyway, I was able to evacuate everybody and valiantly defeat the monstrous beast, but the planet got destroyed in the process. So that sorta sucked.”  
  
“One single critter destroyed an entire goddamn planet?”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“You seriously expect me to believe any of this?”  
  
“I can prove it,” Jim said. “I was the leader of this band of rebel kids back on that planet. I still have holos of all of them. See, this is Angela. And Tamara. That’s Kevin. Tom. My brother, Sam, would’ve come with me but he ran away the day I robbed that bank. My uncle Asshat was there, but only at the beginning. The demogorgon got him.”  
  
“If he’s really dead, you shouldn’t speak of him that way. Call him by his real name. Not Asshat.”  
  
“No. He deserves it. And, uh, he lived. Unfortunately.”  
  
“Man is your family. Y’Oughta treasure that. You don’t know how long you’re gonna have him for. Can’t take family for granted, kid. It’s precious.”  
  
“Fuck that,” Jim said. “If I wanna call him Asshat, I’ll call him Asshat. He really is one.”  
  
“You’ll regret that one day.”  
  
“Fuck you too, man. Fuck you too.” He got up and cleared away his tray.

* * *

Dietary techs came in after breakfast to take down everybody’s order for the next three meals. Jim’s Vulcan roommate was still asleep and he missed them. Jim asked if he would get to place his orders later and was told no, he would just be served the house tray and he would have to deal. He could try his luck again tomorrow.  
  
Then it was 8:45 and time for the community meeting. The Vulcan missed that too. Jim worriedly hoped he wasn’t having a nightmare or anything while he wasn’t there.  
  
It turns out it didn’t matter that the Vulcan missed the community meeting because it was super boring and unimportant.  
  
“Alright. For those of you who are new here, my name is Geoffrey M’Benga and I’m one of the social workers for this unit. Since this is the community meeting, I’m just going to take attendance and then have everyone set a goal for today. Alright? So, we have Montgomery—“  
  
“Aye, I told you, call me Scotty.”  
  
“Right. Scotty. Gaila, Leonard, and James.”  
  
“Jim,” he corrected. He filed away the ‘Leonard’ in the back corner of his mind. No way was he going to call him that.  
  
“Alright. Who wants to go first?” M’Benga asked.  
  
Gaila’s hand shot up. “I want to get to know the new guy a lot better.”  
  
Jim grinned seductively. “Oh, I’m sure that can be arranged.”  
  
“May I remind you that romantic relationships between patients are against the rules?” M’Benga said.  
  
“Who said anything about romance? I just think he’d be good in bed.”  
  
“Well, sexual relationships are forbidden too, okay? And we check into your rooms every fifteen minutes, so don’t think you can try and sneak around.”  
  
Gaila pouted.  
  
“Gaila, I was thinking more of a goal related to your mental health. Like, say, going to groups.”  
  
She sighed. “Alright. My goal is to go to more groups.”  
  
“That’s a great goal. Leonard? Would you like to go next?”  
  
“I’d like to get the hell outta here.”  
  
“So, to work on discharge planning. That’s great. I hope that goes well for you. Scotty?”  
  
“I’d like to get my meds adjusted. I’m still hearin’ voices. They’re giving me anxiety.”  
  
“Okay. Be sure to tell that to your doctor today.”  
  
“And the voices aren’t always helpful neither. Sure, sometimes they are, like when they gave me the transwarp formula, but sometimes they’re just flat-out annoyin’.”  
  
“That’s great Scotty. Jim?”  
  
“My goal is to—“ M’Benga gave him a stern look “—have sex with Gaila.”  
  
She laughed brightly and Jim grinned at her. M’Benga rubbed his temples. “What about a goal related to your mental health, Jim?” he asked.  
  
He shrugged. “My mental health is fine.”  
  
“Why do you think you’re in here, then?”  
  
“Dunno, they never told me.”  
  
“You had to have admitted yourself for some reason.”  
  
“I didn’t. I got pink-slipped.”  
  
“Pink-slipped?” Scotty asked.  
  
“Yeah. Involuntary admission. I’m legally required to be here.” He rolled his eyes. “Wait, you didn’t get pink-slipped?”  
  
He shook his head. “No, I’m voluntary admission.” The others in the group all nodded, and Jim realized he was the only one.  
  
Great. He was the crazy amongst crazies.  
  
“My goal is to, uh, go to groups,” he mumbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That thing about sleeping pills is true, they give you almost hyper-realistic dreams. One time when I was on them I had a dream that was so realistic I thought I was awake, all the actions and events were actually plausible, I was thinking clearly, I even tried to test if it was a dream or not and all my senses were so lit up that I thought it was real. You go to a psych ward and like half the patients are on trazodone and a quarter of them are complaining about it. I’ve been told that’s nothing compared to falling asleep with a nicotine patch on though, that’ll give you really fucked up nightmares.


	3. Psychotherapy A

The Coping Center had six group therapy sessions a day. The first was the community meeting/goals group at 8:45. Then there was psychotherapy A at 10:00. A leisure group at 11:00, and another at 1:30. Psychotherapy B at 4:00. And then a second community meeting/goals group at 8:00.  
  
It was a full day. There was still way too much down time.  
  
The social worker gave him a notebook to write his feelings down in. He drew a spaceship. A wrist with jagged slits across it and blood dripping down. Gaila’s cleavage (she posed for him).  
  
The pen they gave him was three inches long and made of clear, bendy material. Too short to stab someone with and impossible to snap into sharp halves. A safety pen. The same type they had given Jim to use back in juvie.  
  
The Vulcan woke up.  
  
He came to psychotherapy. He looked like absolute shit, dark circles around his eyes and his scrubs wrinkled a thousand different ways, hair staticky and ruffled up.  
  
They all sat down in a room off the day room with chairs ringing around the edges. About half the people in the ward showed up: all the ones who came to the community meeting and one little old lady in a wheelchair.  
  
M’Benga sat down and smiled at the group. “Thank you all for showing up. Today I thought we’d talk about feelings.”  
  
Jim groaned loudly.  
  
“Jim, do you have something you would like to say?”  
  
“Yeah. I don’t wanna talk about my feelings.”  
  
“You’re free to leave.”  
  
“Wait, seriously?”

“Yes, seriously,” M’Benga said. “But you should know that we won’t discharge you until you’ve been coming to the groups regularly.”  
  
“That’s manipulation!”  
  
“That’s part of taking care of yourself, Jim,” he said. “Now, are you going to stay or are you going to go?”  
  
He glared at him. “Fine. I’ll stay.”  
  
“That’s great. I’m proud of you,” he said. “Now let’s get started. I want to go around the room and have everyone here tell me how they’re feeling today. Rosanne? Why don’t you start us off?”  
  
“Happy,” she croaked in a gravelly, smoke-crackled voice.  
  
“That’s great! Why are you happy?”

“Getting discharged today.”  
  
“Wonderful news. And what are you going to do to make sure you don’t end up back here again?”

“Keep taking my meds, goin’ to appointments. Avoidin’ those wrong sorts of people and places. I’m going to a nursing home. Should be better there. Real better.”  
  
“I’m happy for you. Leonard? Would you like to go next?”  
  
“I’m… agitated.”  
  
“Agitated. That’s a great word. Why are you agitated, Leonard?”  
  
“’Cause I hate being here?”  
  
“Ooh! So do I!” Jim chimed in. Gaila and Scotty murmured their assent as well.  
  
M’Benga sighed. “Look. This place is a hospital. Nobody _wants_ to be in the hospital. I get it. But the point is, you all are, and most of you self-admitted. That means that either a loved one persuaded you or you yourself came to the ER because you knew you desperately needed help. You. Sought. Help. That’s a powerful thing.”  
  
Jim hadn’t sought help. Jim had been pink-slipped. He hadn’t realized he needed help and gone to get it. He hadn’t been that in touch with himself. No, he had pushed himself too far, gone past his breaking point in silence, and had to be forcibly admitted by whatever poor stranger had found him bleeding out in the park.  
  
Scotty was hearing voices but Jim was the worst one off here.  
  
Jim was the worst one off.  
  
M’Benga was still talking. “Jim? Jim, you look a little… Are you okay?”  
  
He snapped out of it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”  
  
He eyed him, not falling for it for a second. “I want to talk to you in my office after group. Scotty, you were saying?”  
  
“I feel great.”  
  
“’Great’ isn’t an emotion.”  
  
He shrugged. “Alright, I feel just dandy. Content, how about that? I think I’m ready to go home.”  
  
“Okay. Talk to your doctor about that today. Spock? How about you? How are you feeling?”  
  
“As a Vulcan, I feel nothing.”  
  
“I trained on a Vulcan ward, Spock, you aren’t gonna be able to fool me. Even Vulcans feel emotions. All sentient beings do. All that control that your people espouse takes effort. So. What emotions are you repressing?”  
  
“None,” he said coldly.  
  
“If you aren’t going to cooperate, I’m going to have to ask you to leave group.”  
  
“I feel fine.”  
  
“’Fine.’ See, I don’t like that word. First off, it’s not an emotion, and second off, just yesterday I heard from your own mouth that it has variable definitions. So I’m gonna ask you again. How are you feeling?”  
  
“Adequate.” His voice was frozen ice and cut like a blade.  
  
“I’m gonna have to say no to that word too. Give me a real emotion, Spock. How are you feeling?”  
  
“I feel nothing.”  
  
“Are you saying that you’re numb?”  
  
“No. I do not ‘feel’ numb.”  
  
“Then what are you feeling?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“You’ve been here six days already, Spock. You have to start working with me. I can’t help you unless you help yourself.”  
  
He said nothing and continued glaring daggers at the doctor. M’Benga sighed. “I want to talk to you after group too, after I’m done with Jim. Speaking of. Jim, how are you feeling?”  
  
He stretched out his limbs and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Fan-freakin’-tastic. I think I’m ready to go home, doc. I want to be discharged by tomorrow.”  
  
“You just got here. You haven’t even met with a psychiatrist yet.”  
  
“So? This place is like magic. I’ve been healed. I’m cured of all my bad thoughts and destructive impulses now. I’m ready to go back out into the world and be a model citizen. Heck, I might even start a church group.”  
  
“These bad thoughts and destructive impulses. Can you tell us more about them?”  
  
His face darkened. “I was making a joke.”  
  
“Do you do that often? Use humor to cover up the truth?”  
  
“It’s not that deep.”  
  
“I think it might be deeper than you realize.”  
  
“Fuck off man, it was just a joke.”

* * *

Jim got kicked out of group.  
  
He went back to his room and sat on the bed, fuming. He tore the itchy pink wrap off from around his wrist and threw it away. He scratched at the cut, picking of dried flecks of blood the nurse hadn’t quite scrubbed hard enough to get rid of when she cleaned it.  
  
And then he kept scratching.  
  
And he scraped his fresh scabs off.  
  
Drops of blood were landing on the baby blue blanket like polka dots, giving a bit of life to it, draining a bit of life from Jim.  
  
He found that his thumbnail worked great as a blade. He scratched deeper and deeper and deeper and let a trail of blood run down the right side of his arm and he breathed out because it was such a fucking relief.

* * *

The scrubs were short sleeve. He wore his reason for admission around for everyone to see.  
  
They didn’t stare. He did. He couldn’t stop staring at it. It seemed surreal, like a magnet that always drew his eyes to his wrist.  
  
It was going to scar. He knew that. The cut was deep, and he hadn’t gotten to a dermal regenerator in time. The cut was just a centimeter from the base of his hand, high enough up that it would be visible even in long sleeves whenever he moved.  
  
People would look at him differently. Outside of here. People looked at you different when they knew that you cut. His fifteen minutes of action would leave him with a lifetime of consequences, the scar always visible, like a brand, like a mark defining him, broadcasting to the whole world that this person was damaged. This person couldn’t handle everyday life. This person once tried to end it all.  
  
The most personal, intimate decision a being could ever make and even strangers would see it branded right there on his skin.  
  
He should’ve cut deeper he should’ve gone all the way he should’ve done the other wrist too cut lengthwise rather sideways should’ve opened a vein he should’ve—  
  
“You should’ve gone to the nurses’ station,” M’Benga said, standing in front of him. When had he got there? “If you were feeling like cutting, they could’ve talked you through it. We’re here to help, Jim. You have to trust us.”  
  
Jim looked up at him blankly. “No I don’t. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to do shit, man, I’m my own person, I’m an adult, and if I wanna cut myself, then I will.”  
  
The doctor looked at him pityingly, and anger burned through Jim’s veins, making him stand up and get in the doctor’s face. “You can’t force me to trust you. You can’t force me to do anything. I’m a free person and I’ve got nothing to lose. This place? Isn’t gonna change anything. No matter what happens, after I leave here, I’m just going back to the same old life, so what’s even the point?”  
  
M’Benga gave him a sad smile and nodded towards the door. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

* * *

They put a new wrap on Jim’s wrist. It was neon green this time. He felt like a child, being patched up and bandaged and taken to M’Benga’s office for a scolding.  
  
“Jim,” he started. “Why did you cut yourself?”  
  
He shrugged. “Because I felt like it. What’s it to you?”  
  
“Well, for one thing, I’m your doctor and it’s my job to make sure you’re safe and healthy while you stay here. And for another thing, Jim, I care about you.”  
  
He snorted.  
  
“I’m serious. You seem like a good kid deep down, Jim, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. If you keep treating yourself like this, eventually you’re going to die.”  
  
Jim leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Good. I can’t wait.”  
  
“Do you have a death wish?”  
  
“What gave you that impression?”  
  
“Why do you want to die, Jim?”  
  
His hands clenched into fists unconsciously. “Because I deserve it,” he hissed.  
  
“Why do you think you deserve it?”  
  
“Because I do, alright?! I suck. I’m a scumbag lying whore and everyone around me keeps dying but for some godforsaken reason, I don’t, and I don’t deserve that.”  
  
“Have you ever heard of survivor’s guilt?”  
  
He rolled his eyes.  
  
M’Benga kept talking but by then, Jim wasn’t listening, completely zoned out. This wasn’t simple survivor’s guilt and he hadn’t lied. He was the scum of the earth and he deserved to be dead, dead like all the others were, dead like the kids on Tarsus and his noble, hero father who everyone wanted to see in him. They wanted him to be a ghost, and so why shouldn’t he be? Why was he fighting against the whole goddamn world? Why was he trying so hard when it didn’t fucking matter if he lived or not?  
  
You can only fight for so long. M’Benga just didn’t get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m thinking of switching this fic to gen what do you guys think?


	4. Chess

Jim Kirk’s Full and Complete List of Things You Can Expect In An Adult Psychiatric Unit (To Be Amended):  
  
1\. Invasive Questions and Comments From the Elderly  
  
“Are you a virgin?” Rosanne asked Spock.  
  
“What,” he replied.  
  
“You walk like a virgin,” she said.  
  
2\. Fights Over Control of the TV  
  
The day room had a TV in it. There were three old people who ruled over it with an iron fist. They had it set constantly to either the news, talk shows, old westerns, or Family Feud. A fourth old person—an interloper—had asked the nurses before group if he could watch The Price is Right afterwards, and been promised yes.  
  
He took the remote and changed the channel.  
  
A ten minute screaming match ensued, with one poor nurse trying desperately to yell over everyone and regain control. Eventually, she just turned the TV off in a huff and said now no one could watch it. They could have the remote back in four hours, if everyone behaved.  
  
The TV was back on not five minutes later.  
  
3\. A Severe Lack of Caffeine  
  
There was a coffee machine in the day room, fortunately, but when Jim tried to get a cup from it, it would only spit out decaf.  
  
“Oh come on, you stupid machine,” he said, repeatedly pressing the ‘regular’ button.  
  
“It’s no use, kid. They stop serving regular after eight o’clock in the morning. From then on out, it’s only decaf. You’re too late,” Leonard said.  
  
“But I haven’t had any coffee all day. They gave me _orange juice_ with breakfast.”  
  
He shrugged. “Sucks to be you then. Did you order coffee for tomorrow?”  
  
“No, I thought I would just get it from the machine!”  
  
“You can if you’re up early enough. But there’s no real coffee after breakfast; they don’t even let you order it with your meals after then.”  
  
“What?!” he shrieked. “Well, can I at least have pop?”  
  
Leonard snorted. “Sure. Go ask the nurses for a can of coke. See how well that goes for you.”  
  
4\. Nursing Students  
  
A bunch of college kids in nurses’ scrubs and visitors’ passes were led through the unit by their professor. They kept looking all around, like tourists, like visitors at a zoo. It was their first day, and they were being shown all their possible future options, which included working in the psychiatric unit.  
  
_They_ stared at Jim’s bandage.  
  
Their professor explained that psych patients were usually a lot more willing to talk than patients in other units and then she let her students disperse, go out and explore.  
  
Jim was lounging at a table in a back corner of the day room, doodling a battle between a Constitution class ship and a couple of Klingon battle cruisers that were getting fucking destroyed when two of the students approached him and sat down at his table.  
  
“What are you doing?” one asked politely.  
  
“Drawing,” he said.  
  
“Oh that’s cool. What are you drawing?”  
  
“Boobs,” he said without looking up. The students faltered.  
  
“So, um. What are you in here for?”  
  
His left arm was underneath the table, the bandage temporarily out of view. They didn’t know. They wouldn’t know. He could say anything.  
  
“I can see the future but nobody believes me,” he said solemnly.  
  
The students looked at each other. “Do you have a diagnosis?”  
  
“Nope. They don’t have a word for what I am. The doctor says they might name a disorder after me.”  
  
5\. Crushing Boredom  
  
He could watch TV with the old people. He could play board games. He could do a puzzle. He could color—with crayons or markers, but not colored pencils, because they were too easily weaponized.  
  
He had been on the unit for one night and one morning and he was already going stir crazy.  
  
He got out the cheap plastic chess set and started playing against himself. He could at least sharpen his skills while he was here. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do, besides eat and go to therapy six times a day.  
  
He played three games before getting bored and going back to his room, figuring he would take a nap until lunch. He was certainly tired enough, what with being cut off from caffeine.

* * *

It was 1:30 and it was time for their first leisure group. A blonde nurse sat them all down at a large table in the day room, or those who would come, anyway—Jim, Scotty, a couple of old people, and Leonard, who Jim had yet to come up with a better name for.  
  
The nurse smiled brightly. “Hello everyone. My name is Christine, I’m a clinical support nurse here on the unit, and I’m going to be leading your recreational therapy. Today I thought we would play a dice game called ten thousands.”  
  
She explained the rules, and it was simple enough. You would get five dice to roll, with the goal of getting as many ones and fives as possible, or straights or sets of three or four of a number. Each had an assigned number of points, with the goal of reaching ten thousand. You could roll as many times as you liked in a turn to accumulate as many points as you could, but if you had a roll that didn’t score at all, then you had to pass the dice and you lost all your points for that turn.  
  
Jim played absolutely abysmally, and his only consolation was at least he didn’t come in last. No, last place was Leonard, and Jim wouldn’t stop smirking at him, even though he was only ahead by three hundred points.  
  
“The point of this game was to teach you impulse control. How many of you struggled with that? You would say, ‘oh, just one more roll,’ and then you would lose everything? Does anybody here struggle with that in their daily life? Do you find yourself saying ‘oh, just one more drink, just one more hit,’ and then that turns out to be one drink too many?”  
  
Leonard rolled his eyes, and Jim was gratified that he wasn’t the only one who thought that was cheesy as hell.  
  
“This is stupid,” Jim said. “It’s a dice game, not a metaphor for addiction.”  
  
“Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean it can’t teach you something. I saw you playing chess earlier. Wouldn’t you say that chess teaches you logic and strategizing?”  
  
“Yeah, but that’s chess. This is a game of luck.”  
  
“A large part of life is luck. During the game, you pushed your luck, and I’m willing to bet you do that in your life too.”  
  
“It’s not that deep.”  
  
“You keep saying that. Are you afraid of thinking more deeply about your choices, Jim?”  
  
“Oh my god,” he said. “That’s it. I’m done. Have a nice group; I’m leaving.”  
  
He got up from the table and strode off to his room, slamming the door shut behind him and startling the Vulcan out of meditation.  
  
“Sorry,” he said.  
  
“It is no matter. I was failing to achieve a meditative state anyway,” he said. “Was group enjoyable?”  
  
“Nope. Sucked.” He flopped down on his bed. “You had the right idea in not going. The nurse tried to spin a dice game into a metaphor for life or some shit.”  
  
“It is called recreational _therapy_ for a reason.”  
  
He laughed. “You’re telling me.” He turned over on his side and propped his head up with his elbow. “Your name is Spock, right?”  
  
“Affirmative.”  
  
“How’d you end up in here? You don’t seem like the type for voluntary admission.”  
  
“I did admit myself voluntarily. However, I had no choice in the matter. My father forced the decision.”  
  
“That sucks. I hope you get out of here soon.”  
  
“Thank you. However, that is doubtful. The staff insist on questioning me about my emotions,” he said, with obvious distaste.  
  
“Xenophobic of them.”  
  
“I found it to be so, yes,” he said. He looked at Jim with obvious curiosity. “Why did you come here? You seem to have no faith in the effectiveness of this facility.”  
  
“I don’t. I got pink-slipped. I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible. I have a life and a job to get back to.”  
  
“We all do.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, this place sucks.”  
  
“I find that I quite agree. In the human vernacular, this place does indeed ‘suck.’”  
  
Jim gave a bubbling burst of laughter. “Hey, do you play chess?” he asked.

* * *

Spock took Jim’s queen off the board.  
  
“What? You can’t just do that. The queen wasn’t even in danger!”  
  
“She was not in danger of being captured in the traditional manner. However, that is a valid en passant capture.”  
  
“En passant? Are you kidding me? That’s like the most obscure rule chess has! Everybody ignores it outside of formal tournaments.”  
  
“Not everybody,” Spock said.  
  
Jim grinned. “Oh, it’s on.”

* * *

He beat Spock even without his queen and the Vulcan looked at him like he had just done the impossible. Jim smirked proudly.  
  
“Would you like to play again?” Spock asked instantly. Jim laughed.  
  
“In a hurry to lose?” he asked.  
  
“You will not beat me again. I mistakenly underestimated you,” Spock said.  
  
“We’ll see about that.”

* * *

Spock moved his bishop and eyed Jim carefully, gauging his reaction. Jim stared at the board, eyes flicking between the various pieces. A slow smile spread across his face.  
  
“You’re supposed to call checkmate, you know,” he said.  
  
“Most do not express happiness upon realizing they have lost.”  
  
“Don’t get me wrong, I love winning, but not as much as I love the game itself. The fun is in the challenge. Winning every time? Yeah, it’s an ego boost, but there’s no real game to that.”  
  
Spock cocked his head. “Humans are peculiar.”  
  
“If that’s your Vulcan way of calling me weird, then I hate to break it you buddy, but we’re _both_ in a psych ward here. I’m guessing you aren’t all that well-adjusted either.”  
  
Spock was still staring at him. “You enjoyed being outsmarted more than you enjoyed winning previously.”  
  
Jim grinned and started rearranging the pieces to their original setup. “Yeah. So why don’t you go on and do it again?”  
  
And maybe he was crazy, but he thought he saw just a hint of a smile on the Vulcan’s lips.


	5. Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third update in one day I really should be doing homework but will I? No

Jim met with the psychiatrist.  
  
He prescribed him an antidepressant and said that he needed intensive therapy after he left here. He asked if Jim would be open to the idea of a family therapy session.  
  
He said no. Of course he said no. That was the absolute last thing that he wanted—to talk about his issues and emotions with Frank and Winona. They were the cause of like half of them. What could he possibly say? That he was more fucked up than they realized and also it was their fault?  
  
He could just imagine Frank’s reaction to that.  
  
The doctor asked him to sign a form saying he consented to being administered the pill. Jim asked about a billion and one questions about the drug and its potential side effects before he agreed to sign. The psychiatrist didn’t say a word about trust issues or paranoia or anything, thankfully.  
  
Jim signed the paper.

* * *

They had recreational therapy again. Jim went to it. So did Spock, interestingly enough.  
  
Christine had decided to simply hold the group at the table they were playing chess at and essentially force them to attend. She moved their board onto a counter and everything. Jim scowled at her from his seat.  
  
Just as they sat down, Rosanne was called away by another nurse. Her cab had arrived to take her to the nursing home. Everyone said goodbye and wished her good luck. Gaila gave her a hug.  
  
And then she was gone.  
  
Christine unlocked a cabinet and pulled out a board game, carefully locking it back up when she was finished. She set the game on the center of the table. “This is a fun game, okay? It’s called LifeStories. I swear it’s fun. Only we’re not going to use the board. It’s not designed the greatest. What you’ll do is just draw a card and then answer the question. Sounds simple enough, right? Let’s go in a circle. Jim. Why don’t you start us off?”  
  
Already bored, he drew a card out of the stack and read it aloud. “’Did you have any nicknames while growing up? If so, what were they?’ Oh geez, I had a lot. Uh, let’s see. JT, Jim, Jimmy, I went by Jay for a while in middle school, oh, and Frank used to call me ‘brat’ so often that I just started answering to it.”  
  
“Who is Frank?” Christine asked.  
  
“My uncle,” he said.  
  
“So he does have a name,” Leonard said, smirking, and Jim realized his mistake and swore mentally.  
  
“What do you mean?” Christine asked.  
  
“He was spinning me a ton of lies about him at breakfast and the entire time he just called him Asshat.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Jim said.  
  
“Hey!” Christine said sharply. “You don’t want to get kicked out of group again, do you?”  
  
Jim shut his mouth.  
  
“You and your uncle don’t get along?” she asked, more gently now.  
  
“Not really,” he said dryly.  
  
“And why is that?”  
  
“Because he’s an asshat.”  
  
“What makes him an asshat?”  
  
He shrugged defensively. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”  
  
“There has to be something. It sounds like you really hate him. Was he a big part of your life growing up?”  
  
“Yeah. Man practically raised me.”  
  
“That was generous of him, to take you in like that.”  
  
“He was only doing it because Mom was giving him half her pay. He’s a deadbeat drunk. He doesn’t actually give a shit about me.”  
  
“What makes you say that?”  
  
“The fact that it’s true?”  
  
Christine looked at him. “You go by Jim, right?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“So why’d you say JT first?”  
  
It was what the kids had called him back on Tarsus. “I don’t know, I just did, alright? It’s not that deep.”  
  
She quirked an eyebrow and decided to move on. “Spock. It’s your turn.”  
  
He drew a card. “’Describe how your parents shaped your spiritual beliefs’,” he read. “My father taught me the ways of Vulcan mysticism and Surakian philosophy and my mother instructed me in the teachings of her Earth religion, Judaism. I do subscribe to the religion in the strictest sense but I observe its holidays to honor her.”  
  
“Your mother followed an Earth religion?” Christine asked. “Forgive me if this seems rude, but isn’t that pretty unusual for a Vulcan?”  
  
Spock stiffened and steeled his face into faultless emotionlessness. As if he was bracing himself. “My mother was human.”  
  
“Was?”  
  
He said nothing.  
  
“That must have been hard for you, growing up as a hybrid. Was it difficult?”  
  
No response.  
  
She sighed. “Okay. Gaila. How about you?”  
  
She picked a card out from the middle of the stack. “’What was your favorite subject in school?’ Oh. Um. I never went to school. Unless you count… um, my training.”  
  
“What was your favorite thing to learn there?”  
  
“Dancing,” she said. “But when I was seven, a client stopped by to buy some girls, and I stole a padd off of him. I taught myself everything I could learn from it. Computer programming, coding, that sort of thing.”  
  
“Did you enjoy that?”  
  
She smiled. “Yeah.”  
  
Leonard drew a card. “’As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?’ Easy. A doctor.”  
  
“And then you became a doctor, isn’t that right?”  
  
“Sure is, ma’am,” he said, with sickening Southern charm that made her smile.  
  
“Wait, you’re a doctor? The hell are you doing in here, man?” Jim asked.  
  
“Was. I was a doctor.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”  
  
He shook his head. “It’s my own damn fault. I screwed up a good thing, and now I gotta live with the consequences.”  
  
“That’s a very mature way of looking at it, Leonard,” Christine said. “Jim? It’s your turn again.”  
  
“’At what age did you start dating?’ I don’t really do dates. I mostly just go to clubs and sleep around.”  
  
Christine looked uncomfortable. “Okay. What age did you start doing that, then?”  
  
“Fifteen.”  
  
“Christ,” Leonard said. “Ain’t that a bit young?”  
  
He shrugged. In truth, fifteen was just when he started clubbing, at that was at the tail end of the year too, when he got back from Tarsus. He had lost his virginity way before that, when the famine was at its peak.  
  
Spock drew a card. “’Tell about a time when someone held your hand.’ On Vulcan, such an action is an intimate gesture.”  
  
“Like a kiss?” Christine asked. He nodded. She smiled. “Okay then. So tell us about your first kiss.”  
  
“I would prefer not to,” he said stiffly. Jim gaped and barely held back a laugh, mind working rapid-fire.  
  
“That’s fine. We’ll just move on. Gaila?”

* * *

“You’ve never been kissed before,” Jim said in their room later. “Have you?”  
  
“I fail to see how that is any of your business,” Spock said primly.  
  
“It’s not, really,” Jim admitted. “I just think it’s cute. I mean, you’re how old? Twenty-one, twenty-two?”  
  
“I am twenty-two point three four Earth years of age.”  
  
“Twenty-two point three four years old and you’ve never been kissed,” he said. “What, did the girls just not like you back home? Or guys?”  
  
“Vulcans typically refrain from physical intimacy until bonding. One of Surak’s most famous proverbs is ‘wide experience increases wisdom, provided the experience is not sought purely for the stimulation of sensation.’”  
  
“So the idea is that sex is some emotional vice that Vulcans don’t wanna get mixed up in unless absolutely necessary.”  
  
“In crude terms, yes.”  
  
“Well see, I would interpret that proverb differently. I mean, the first part of it is ‘wide experience increases wisdom.’ I would take that to mean you should broaden your horizons, so long as you aren’t doing it just for fun.”  
  
“That is how it is already understand.”  
  
“Okay, I’ll put it more bluntly. I think you should try sex for academic purposes. So that you know what you’re doing before you get married. That’ll make your first time with your bondmate a lot better, trust me.”  
  
“Are you making me an offer?”  
  
Jim’s eyebrows shot up and he burst out laughing in surprise. “Wait, no, don’t take offense to that. I was just… shocked. I mean, I was talking about after you get out of here, but if you wanna, sure, we can have sex. Wait, do the nurses actually check into our rooms every fifteen minutes?”

He shook his head. “They look into this room an average of 2.4 times a day, less if I spend a significant portion of time in the day room.”  
  
“Oh. Well great. So do you wanna have sex?”  
  
“No, I merely thought that you were proposi—“  
  
“Oh! I’m sorry, I just assumed—“  
  
“It is no matter—“  
  
“I thought that you were asking—“  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
Jim cleared his throat. “Well. Anyway. I highly recommend sex, I think it would do you some good. Relax you, y’know? Might even help you sleep better.”  
  
Spock merely raised an eyebrow, looking faintly amused, and turned back to the book he had been reading.

* * *

Psychotherapy B was the unit’s mandatory weekly session on how and why to quit smoking, and not a single person who showed up was a smoker. There were smokers on the unit, sure, but they all left when they heard what the group was going to be about. M’Benga ended up talking to just Gaila, Jim, Scotty, and Spock. None of whom smoked.  
  
As soon as group let out, dinner was served, and Jim plopped down next to Leonard, dragging Spock along with him.  
  
“Oh look, it’s you,” Leonard said.  
  
“Aww, come on, you know you love me.”  
  
“Do you seriously not have anything better to do?”  
  
“We are in a psych ward. Nobody has anything better to do. Neither do you.”  
  
“Kid, I’m in withdrawal, the last thing I need right now is you pestering me. Go away.”  
  
“Is that why you lost your medical license?”  
  
“No shit that’s why I lost my medical license. People get all antsy when they hear that their doctor is a drunk.”  
  
“You were drinking on the job?” Jim asked, concerned.  
  
“No! I was a goddamn professional, I knew where to draw the line. The only reason I lost my license is because my ex-wife is a shark of a lawyer who hates my guts. She’s done everything but kick me off the planet. All I’ve got left is my bones ‘cause of her.”  
  
“Bones!” he said. “That’s what I’ll call you! It’s much better than Leonard.”  
  
“No it ain’t,” he said, with a look that was clearly calling him a dumbass.  
  
“Yes it is. It’s way better than Leo- _nerd_.”  
  
“You got some nerve callin’ me a nerd, Mr. Plays-Chess-Against-Vulcans-And-Wins.”  
  
“I fail to see how that is an insult to James. If anything, his logical prowess is to be viewed with the highest favor,” Spock said.  
  
“And you’re definitely a nerd,” Leonard said.  
  
“If calling me a ‘nerd’ is your human way of saying I have a high intellect, then I will wear the title with honor.”  
  
“Alright, nerd,” he said. Jim laughed, grinning widely.  
  
“So what got you in here, anyhow?” he asked conversationally. “It doesn’t matter how good a lawyer your ex-wife is, she couldn’t have gotten you institutionalized just by sheer force of will.”  
  
“She didn’t. I did that on my own,” he said. “Custody case was closed a few days ago, and uh… I went out drinking. Drank a little bit too much, I guess. Started driving, didn’t know where I was going, didn’t really care. I’m lucky I didn’t hurt anyone. I just… didn’t care. When I sobered up, I came straight here. They’re gonna discharge me to a six-month rehab clinic out in Pheonix when I get outta here.”

“That’s great,” Jim said. “Good for you, man. I wish you the best of luck.” He clapped him on the shoulder.  
  
“Thanks, kid.” He held up his styrofoam cup full water. “To gettin’ better.”  
  
“To getting better,” Jim said, raising his cup in turn. Spock looked between them in confusion.  
  
“I don’t understand. Is this a human ritual—“  
  
A nurse approached the table. “Mr. Kirk? You have a visitor?”  
  
“A visitor?” he asked.  
  
The nurse stepped aside to give him a clear line of sight to the door, and there stood Frank.


	6. Night

Jim jumped out of his seat and went over to greet Frank, leading him to a table far away from anyone before he had a chance to say anything to Spock or Bones.

He smiled plastically until his back was turned to the room and then he dropped the expression instantly. “What are you doing here, Frank?”

“What do you think I’m doing here? I came to visit you.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yes I did. That’s what you do when your family is in the hospital. You visit them and you make sure they’re being treated right.” 

“Mom made you promise to, didn’t she?”

“That’s irrelevant. The point is, I came. You oughta be more grateful, kid. I don’t  _have_  to be here.”

“That’s what I said.”

Frank glared at him. “I swear on your father’s grave, you are the most ungrateful, spoiled, no-good son of a bitch that I ever met.”

“That’s cool,” he said boredly.

“Are you even listening to me?!”

“Yup. Sure am.” He twirled his safety pen between his fingers.

“God. You know, it’s no wonder you ended up in a psych ward. You’re just like your father. Arrogant, suicidal bastard with a superiority complex. They put you on any drugs yet?”

“Yeah, I volunteered to be given a shit ton of drugs. I’m gonna be high as a kite while I’m here. Makes listening to you a lot more tolerable.”

Frank folded his arms. “And what are you gonna do once you get outta here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You gonna come back home? Just like that? Keep freeloading off of your mother and I?”

“Of course I’m gonna come back home. Where else would I go?” He frowned.

“Your own place. It’s about damn time. You’re an adult, Jim. This incident was the final straw. You’re out of control. We can’t support you anymore. Not if you’re gonna be acting like this.”

“You can’t just kick me out,” Jim said, panic spiking through his chest.

“We should’ve thrown you out on your ass a long time ago. You aren’t acting right, and you never have. Ever since you got back from that planet, you’ve been nothing but trouble for us. You have any idea what you’ve done to your mother, pulling a stunt like this? She worries about you, you know.”

“I won’t do it again! I’m not gonna—I’m not gonna get better living on the streets. You can’t just throw me out. I’ve only got like a thousand credits saved up.”

“Yeah? And who’s fault would that be?”

“Come on man, don’t do this to me!”

“We’re not ‘doing’ anything to you. We’ve given and given and given and all you’ve done is be ungrateful. We just finally reached our limit. Should’ve done this a long time ago.”

“Wait!” he said. “What do—what do you want? What’ll it take to get you to let me to stay?”

Frank eyed him. “What are you willing to give?”

“Anything,” he said instantly. He couldn’t be homeless. He couldn’t.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Meantime, I’ve got some news. Your mother’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“She accepted another tour of duty. A two-year patrol mission along the Neutral Zone. That’s why she didn’t come visit you tonight. She ships out early tomorrow, and it’s a long drive to get over here, so.” He shrugged.

“Okay,” Jim said numbly. Automatically. “Thanks for coming.”

Frank smiled. “You’re welcome. See? Now was that really so hard?”

He got up and left, leaving Jim alone at the table. Anything. He’d promised him anything. What could Frank possibly want? What did Jim even have to give? The hell had he just gotten himself into?

He walked back over to his previous table where Spock and Bones were looking at him with concern.

“Was that Asshat?” Bones asked, and Jim actually smiled, a little.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“What’d he want?”

“He’s kicking me out of the house,” he said. He stared down at his cup, wishing it held something stronger than just water. “Says this ‘stunt’ was the final straw. Called me a freeloader, said I was out of control. He makes it sound like I tried to kill somebody.”

Spock glanced down at the bandage on his wrist. “Did you not?”

“No! I don’t count. And I wasn’t trying to kill myself anyway. I was just cutting,” he said.

“’Just’ cutting. Like how I was ‘just’ drinking and driving. That was actually probably safer than what you were doing,” Leonard said.

“You two can both shove it. I’ve had a crappy enough night already, I don’t need you two making it worse. Besides, even if I had been trying to kill myself, 95% of suicide attempts don’t work out. I probably would have failed anyway,” he said glumly.

Spock and Bones simply stared at him, unsure what they could possibly say to that.

A long moment passed in silence.

“So what are you going to do?” Bones asked. “About getting kicked out?”

“I don’t know. I asked Frank what it would take to get him to let me stay, but he didn’t give me an answer. I told him I’d do anything. He said he’d think about it.”

“Perhaps the social workers will have some suggestions for you,” Spock said. 

“Like what? A homeless shelter? ‘Cause my options are that or the streets.”

“And a homeless shelter is just such a fine environment to try and recover at,” Bones said.

“There are also group homes,” Spock said.

Jim stared at him. “Those are for the severely mentally ill.”

Spock quirked an eyebrow and opened his mouth to say something, but just then, Christine got on the intercom and announced that it was time for their second goals group, the final group of the day. Jim hopped out of his seat and went over to the large table where it was being held, Spock and Bones reluctantly following.

“Okay,” Christine said, holding a clipboard from that morning with all of the goals they had listed written on it next to their names. “So this is just our wrap-up group, it’s very short, I just wanna know whether you accomplished your goal for today. Let’s see. First on the list is Gaila. You said your goal was to go to groups. How’d you do with that?”

“Great,” she said.

“Really? How many groups did you go to today?”

“All of them. Except the first rec therapy group. I was taking a shower when that started.”

“Okay. That’s great. Great job on accomplishing your goal. Let’s see, next we have Leonard. You said your goal was to work on discharge planning. How’d that go for you?”

“Pretty good. I got a plan in place now. I’m going to a six-month rehab clinic in Pheonix after I leave here. I head out on Wednesday. Doc says they’re gonna keep me here until then so I don’t relapse between now and then. The second I leave this place, I hop on a plane and head straight there.”

“That’s wonderful! I hope that works out for you,” Christine said. “Alright. Now Scotty. You said your goal was to get your meds adjusted. Did you talk to the psychiatrist about that?”

“Aye. He’s doublin’ my dosage. Says I should feel fine within a coupla days.”

“That’s great. And last but not least, Jim. Your goal was to go to groups. How did that work out for you?”

“Pretty okay.”

“Really? Because you walked out of my rec therapy group early. And Dr. M’Benga told me you got kicked out of psychotherapy for being uncooperative and then cussing him out. In fact, you were uncooperative during almost every group you attended today.”

“I said my goal was to go to groups, which I did. I at least showed up to every single one of them, which is better than anyone else on this ward did.”

“That’s not true. Scotty and Gaila both came to every group except one today, and they were model patients at each. And I don’t appreciate you trying to put down others here to make yourself look better.”

“I wasn’t—!“

“Maybe tomorrow your goal can be to  _participate_  in groups.”

Jim glared at her.

* * *

 

It was 1:43 a.m. and Spock lay in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

He had gotten lucky last night. He had been so exhausted that when he finally allowed himself, he had passed out into a dreamless sleep. There was no guarantee that the same thing would happen tonight.

Jim was asleep. He would not be able to wake Spock if he had a nightmare as he would not be awake to notice.

He hated this. He hated this human weakness of his. Vulcans did not have nightmares. Vulcans did not experience uncontrollable fear. Vulcans did not lay awake at night, so at the mercy of their own emotions that they were  _afraid_  to go to sleep.

He was a disgrace. Half of him thought that was the true reason his father had forced him here. Shame rather than concern. Better to keep the emotional half-breed away and out of the public eye.

He had sent him to human therapists rather than Vulcan mind healers. That in itself spoke volumes. Spock’s problem was a human one, something a Vulcan would never fall prey to, something Vulcan doctors had no experience with.

An entire race of people had lost their planet but none of them had reacted to it in the way Spock had. None of them felt this ever-gripping, irrational fear. None of them saw their mother plummeting as the ground gave way at the most random of moments. None of them had the all-consuming guilt of knowing the planet had been destroyed solely for their sake. None of them were hyper-aware of their surroundings and the news. None of them closed themselves off to the universe and felt this horrible, sucking loneliness.

Vulcans did not get PTSD.

He was a failure.

He thought briefly of Jim with the wrap around his arm. He wondered what that had felt like. Why he had done it. There must have been some sort of emotional release. Maybe it made him feel numb, like the doctor thought that Spock was.

Spock wished he was numb.

He closed his eyes. He could ask for a sleeping pill. Just go out to the nurses’ station and explain the problem to them. They would give him a pill if he asked. They might even make it a prescription the next day.

He could sleep if he wanted to.

He should not be afraid. That was a human weakness, and he was a Vulcan.

The cutoff for requesting sleeping pills was 2:00 a.m. If he was going to ask for one, he would have to do it now.

He flung the covers back and got out of bed.

* * *

 

Jim woke up to the sound of screaming.

He jumped out of bed and rushed over to Spock, shaking his shoulders roughly. “Spock! Spock, you have to wake up! You’re having a nightmare!”

Three night nurses burst into the room and one quickly jabbed a hypo into Spock’s neck. The man slowly went limp, eyes still closed, until he collapsed back onto the bed, boneless.

Jim’s heart was pounding.

* * *

 

They didn’t talk about it in the morning, just silently went to breakfast when the buzzer sounded and woke them. Jim wanted to apologize but he wasn’t sure how and he didn’t want to make Spock uncomfortable by bringing it up if he didn’t want to talk about it.

Leonard set his tray down next to them. “You guys hear that scream in the middle of the night last night? Woke me the hell up at three in the goddamn morning, and then I couldn’t go back, and—What? What is it?”

Neither man said anything, and Leonard put two and two together. The screaming had come from one of them.

“Oh,” he said. “I—uh, sorry.”

* * *

 

Everyone looked tired and sleep-deprived at the community meeting. Some of them shot glares towards Jim and Spock, knowing the commotion had come from their room but unsure which of them to blame.

“Alright. So this is the community meeting, or goals group. It’s our first group of the day, and I just want everyone to go around and say one thing they want to accomplish today. Something related to your mental health. Okay?” Christine asked cheerily. “Jim. Why don’t you go first?”

“Work on discharge planning,” he said.

“You have been here one day.”

“I know, and I’m ready to leave.”

She sighed. “Alright. Leonard, what about you?”

He shrugged. “At this point I’m just waiting around until Wednesday.”

“You can still set goals for the remainder of your stay here.”

“Alright. I, uh, I’ll try to go to groups.”

“That’s great. Gaila?”

She twirled a strand of hair around her finger, thinking. “I want to study for my Federation citizenship test. Does that count as a goal?”

“Yeah, that’s a great goal! Getting your citizenship would be a big step forward in the right direction. What about you, Scotty? What’s your goal for today?

“I wanna work on gettin’ myself an apartment. Am I allowed to do that while I’m here?”

“Yeah, sure. You can use a computer under supervision, and they have communicators available at the nurses’ station. Just be sure to give it back when you’re done,” she said. “And you. You’re new here. Why don’t you tell us your name and then decide on a goal for today?”

“Sulu. Hikaru Sulu,” the man said. “Uh, I guess my goal is to… I don’t know. Not get in any fights?”


	7. Spock

Dietary came and took everybody’s orders, then the nurses moved out to dispense morning meds. They gave Jim two tiny cups, one with a pill capsule in it and another full of water. He downed it in a single gulp.  
  
They had group therapy in the back room again.  
  
“So how was everybody’s day yesterday?” M’Benga asked casually.  
  
“Sucked,” Jim said.  
  
“Why? What happened?”  
  
“My uncle’s kicking me out of the house.”  
  
“Do you have anywhere else you can go?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“A friend you can stay with?”  
  
“I don’t have any friends. Except Gary, but he doesn’t count.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“He’s even more of a mess than I am, trust me. I can’t stay with him,” he said. And then, with a smirk, “He would drive me insane.”  
  
“Is Gary a supportive friend to you?”  
  
“Not really. He’s kind of an asshole? We mostly argue and have sex with each other. I’m actually pretty sure he hates me, but I’m a good lay, so he sticks around.”  
  
M’Benga blinked. “Ah. Okay. Um. So where are you going to go after you get discharged?”  
  
He shrugged. “I guess a homeless shelter.”  
  
“Have you considered a group home? Homeless shelters aren’t the greatest environment.”  
  
“I don’t need a group home. I’m not that bad off.”  
  
“Jim, I don’t mean to be crass, but you were hospitalized for having a mental breakdown just two days ago. Maybe living in a place with staff there to supervise and take care of you would be a good idea. You should at least consider it.”  
  
“No. I don’t need to. I don’t need nurses constantly hanging around and babysitting me. The cutting was a one time thing. I’m better now. I’m on antidepressants.”  
  
“Jim, antidepressants can take up to three months to fully stabilize. They aren’t an instant cure, and they need to paired with actual talk therapy in order to truly help you make a change. In addition, you aren’t even taking your full-dosage medications yet. I prescribed you a pretty high dosage, so you have to be slowly weaned into it.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So, meds aren’t everything. Getting better takes work. You’re going to have to put in more effort than just taking a pill every morning. You need to accept that that’s not going to be enough.”  
  
“Oh, but somehow a group home is?”  
  
“A group home is a lot different than a homeless shelter. It might actually do you good rather than put you further behind in your recovery.”  
  
Jim folded his arms. “I don’t need a babysitter.”  
  
M’Benga sighed. “We’ll talk about this more later. Spock? How was your day yesterday? I understand you had a pretty rough night.”  
  
The faintest olive blush tinged the Vulcan’s cheeks. “I would prefer not to discuss it.”  
  
“Would you be open to discussing it privately?”  
  
“No.”  
  
M’Benga looked at him. “What was the nightmare about, Spock?”  
  
He said nothing.  
  
“Spock. We can talk about this here and now, or we can talk about it privately later, but we are going to talk about it. This is your seventh day here. How long do you want to stay on this unit? Because we won’t discharge you until you start cooperating.”  
  
“What if I wish to be discharged against medical advice?”  
  
“This is a psych ward. It’s different from the other wings of the hospital. You don’t have that option if we deem you a danger to yourself or others.”  
  
“I am neither of those things.”  
  
“What was the nightmare about?”  
  
They stared at each other for several tense, tense moments.  
  
“The destruction of Vulcan,” Spock spat out.  
  
“You were there that day, weren’t you? Aboard the Enterprise?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What did you feel like, watching your planet get destroyed like that?”  
  
Silence.  
  
The Vulcan’s face was burning an angry green, and he seemed to know and be horribly embarrassed by it, which only made him blush harder.  
  
“I felt everything.”  
  
“What do you mean by that?” M’Benga asked, leaning forward.  
  
“I felt the psychic death cry of the billions of people below. I felt their lives go out, and it was like I was dying too, millions and millions of times over. I felt their grief and sadness and anger and I felt all that myself and my own guilt too for being the cause of it. Is that what you wanted to know, doctor? I felt _human_.”  
  
There was a moment of shocked silence.  
  
M’Benga was the first to recover. “What do you mean by—“  
  
Spock stood up and left the room.

* * *

Jim entered their shared room quietly and closed the door behind him.  
  
“Hey,” he said, almost a whisper. “Do you wanna play chess?”  
  
Spock lifted his head up from his pillow and looked at him. “Yes.”

* * *

Jim moved his rook a single space to the right, and Spock eyed it suspiciously, trying to figure out what distant strategy he was planning.  
  
“Leisure group starts in fifteen minutes,” Jim said.  
  
“I am aware.”  
  
“Wanna ditch?”  
  
“Ditch?”  
  
“Yeah. Play hookie. Just not show up. We can take the chess board back to our room and play there instead.”  
  
“That is agreeable.”  
  
Jim gave a small smile. “Pretty rebellious for a Vulcan, aren’t you?”  
  
“I am considered so, yes.”  
  
“Wait, seriously?” he asked. “Why? Did you—What sort of—I can’t even imagine what a rebellious Vulcan would be like. What’d you do?”  
  
“I am half-human.” He moved a bishop to be right next to Jim’s queen and yeah right, as if he would ever take such obvious bait. “It was looked down upon by my peers. I rejected admittance to the Vulcan Science Academy following some xenophobic comments made by the Council in regards to my mother. I am the first person to have ever done so in the history of my world.”  
  
“Damn,” Jim said, grinning. “That’s badass, standing up for her like that. You really weren’t kidding when you said you were a rebel, were you?”  
  
“Indeed not.”  
  
He took Spock’s queen, and the Vulcan blinked in shock, having not even seen the trap. “You are a proficient player,” he said.  
  
“Indeed,” he teased. Spock raised an eyebrow.  
  
Spock moved a pawn. “Check.”  
  
Jim’s eyes rocketed down to the board. The pawn’s absence had put his king in danger from a bishop, but every space he could possibly move to was being defended by either Spock’s rook or his knight. His eyes skimmed over every single piece on the board, careful to miss nothing. No. There was nothing he could do to either take Spock’s bishop or block its path. He was trapped.  
  
“That’s check _mate_ , you asshole. Why didn’t you call it?”  
  
“You make intriguing facial expressions upon realizing you have been outsmarted. I find it fascinating to watch.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I believe in the human vernacular, the phrase is ‘your eyes light up.’”  
  
“You like to watch me realize that I’ve lost. And you call me weird.” His eyes caught sight of the clock. “Shit. Group’s about to start. Let’s pack up and continue this in our room.”

* * *

“So you used to be in Starfleet,” Jim said, getting out his knight as his starter. “What happened?”  
  
Spock moved a pawn forward a space. “Nero.”  
  
“You left after… everything?”  
  
“I decided to help with construction of the new colony. I ended up being an assistant to my father, who is the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. I helped him mediate between the colony and the Federation as a whole.”  
  
“That sounds cool.”  
  
“My efforts were mainly secretarial.”  
  
“Oh. Well, still. It’s important work.”  
  
“It is,” he agreed. “However, it could be done by anyone. It has been suggested that maintaining a Vulcan presence in Starfleet would have perhaps been more prudent.”  
  
“So why didn’t you?”  
  
Spock didn’t reply.  
  
“You don’t have to answer,” Jim said quickly.  
  
“The question did not make me uncomfortable. I just—“ he started. “I do not have an answer. I suppose the decision was… an emotional one.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “That’s okay, you know. To feel things. Even Vulcans feel things, and you can’t convince me otherwise. You just like to pretend not to.”

“It is not pretense. Kohlinahr adepts are truly devoid of all vestigial emotions.”  
  
“What about all those Vulcans who aren’t kohlinahr adepts?”  
  
“Their control is sufficient to suppress that which is unwanted.”  
  
“So it does take effort, then? To control their feelings? They all have to work at it?”  
  
“…Not to the degree which I do.”  
  
“So? That’s not like, a failing on your part. If anything, having to work a little bit harder than others just proves you have even greater control. That’s a compliment to you, not an insult.”  
  
“It is not viewed that way on the homeworld.”  
  
“Yeah, well the homeworld sounds sorta xenophobic sometimes too, so I’d take all their views with a grain of salt.”  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“Don’t take it at face value. Don’t just blindly follow. Er, um… Don’t just unquestioningly accept everything you’re told.”  
  
“I do not make a habit of doing so in the first place.”  
  
“Yeah, but you do when it comes to some things, and that’s not good.”  
  
Spock moved a knight, and Jim swore, pulling his rook back in retreat. Spock moved his queen diagonally, and Jim castled, shuffling his king and rook around each other.  
  
A pawn forward. Jim captured it with his queen on instinct. Spock frowned at the board in confusion, and captured the queen with his bishop.  
  
“Fuck, that was a dumb move.”  
  
“It was… quite fast.”  
  
He moved his rook. “I wasn’t talking about mine.”  
  
Spock’s mouth opened just slightly. Jim laughed brightly, grinning wide.  
  
“I believe it was you who insisted that the winner must call checkmate upon making the final move.”  
  
“Oh, please. That was revenge. And you should’ve seen your face. It was golden.”  
  
“My face is not made nor encrusted with gold—“  
  
“Figure of speech, Spock.”

* * *

Leonard eyed them suspiciously as they exited their room and took their seats for lunch. “And what exactly were you two doing in there while the rest of us were having group?”  
  
Jim leered. “You sure you wanna know?”  
  
“We were playing chess,” Spock said.  
  
“Oh, come on! You spoil all my fun!”  
  
“That is patently untrue. Since you have arrived, you have spent 33.78% of your recreational time in my company, indicating that I am one of your primary sources of fun.”  
  
“Oh really?” Jim grinned. “So does that mean I’m one of your ‘primary sources of fun’ too?”  
  
“Statistically—“  
  
“Hey, can I sit here?” Hikaru asked, approaching their table with his tray.  
  
“Sure,” Jim said. He took a seat across from Spock.  
  
Jim drank in the sight of him. Going by the name, he was Japanese, with dark hair and pale skin, not too different from Spock. He had a fat lip and three butterfly bandages on his brow. Given his goal for the day, Jim had to assume the injuries had been provoked somehow.  
  
“How’d you get that shiner?” he asked.  
  
“Fencing match gone wrong.”  
  
“I thought fencing was done with swords, not fists.”  
  
“Eh, it’s either/or if you’re angry enough.”  
  
“Fascinating,” Spock said. “How are the competitors’ anger levels measured for judging purposes?”  
  
“Oh, uh, I was being sarcastic. Making a joke, y’know?”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“Is that what got you in here? Fighting?” Jim asked.  
  
“Yeah. The admiralty gave me an offer: either I get probated to this place or I get expelled from the Academy. I got pink-slipped.”  
  
“No kidding? Me too!” Jim said. “Man, before you got here, I was the only one in for involuntary admission.”  
  
“Really? What’d you do?” His eyes skimmed over Jim, looking for injuries. His left wrist was out of view, as it so often was lately. He had found that he was perpetually conscious of it now.  
  
He would see the bandage sooner or later. He was going to find out the truth. There was nothing that Jim could do about it.  
  
“I lit my own house on fire and the judge sent me here instead of jail. Said I needed serious help.” He rolled his eyes. Hikaru snorted approvingly.  
  
“That’s cool. So why’d you do it?”  
  
“What?”

“Why’d you burn your house down?”  
  
He shrugged. “My uncle was gonna sell it, and I figured it was better to lose it entirely than to let that scumbag make money off it.”  
  
Spock was looking at him curiously. Bones had rolled his eyes early on and turned his attention back to his meal.  
  
“Ah,” Sulu said. For now, he seemed to believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t really know where I’m going with this fic, do you guys have any suggestions for plot points or anything?


	8. Sarek

For the next rec therapy, they made Valentines’ Day cards because it seriously sucked to be stuck alone in a psych ward over the holiday but what could be done about it?  
  
Jim made cards for Spock and Bones and Gaila and Christine, all with horribly cheesy pick-up lines written inside them.  
  
Spock misunderstand the assignment and just made a card with a green, anatomically correct heart drawn on it, slightly stylized.  
  
Bones made an anti-Valentines’ Day card with ‘LOVE SUCKS’ written on it and then Christine talked to him about his divorce for half an hour.  
  
The nurses had upbeat pop music playing in the background while everyone colored. Jim felt a bit like he was in kindergarten again.  
  
If this was the adult unit, then he couldn’t imagine what the kid unit was like.  
  
They tried to collectively explain Valentines’ Day to Spock but they probably just ended up confusing him more because then he gave his weird Vulcan heart card to Jim, who set it up proudly for display on his nightstand.  
  
Then group was over and they had nothing to do until the next group.  
  
Jim got out his notebook and drew the schematics for a warp drive engine. Spock forced himself to read the self-help book M’Benga had given him.  
  
To say it was slow going would be an understatement.  
  
Jim had smuggled in a padd. He’d used it to show Bones pictures of the Tarsus kids, but other than that, it stayed tucked under the mattress of his hospital bed where no one would find it. Now he got it out and played a stupid game on it. There was, of course, no wifi here, so he couldn’t check his email or do anything actually useful.  
  
But he could play on stupid apps.  
  
They all met with their various psychiatrists. There were three who worked on this ward, the patients evenly dispersed between them. Jim and Spock had the same one. Spock was called away to see him first. When he came back, he looked like a damn android, stiff and unemotional as a being could be, moving robotically and keeping his face as blank as a sheet of paper.  
  
Then it was Jim’s turn.  
  
“Now, forgive me if this seems a bit repetitive Jim, but you’ve never been physically abused, correct?”  
  
“Correct.”  
  
“Or sexually?”  
  
“Or sexually.”  
  
“Emotionally?”  
  
“Not that either.”  
  
“Okay. So. Why are you in here, Jim?”  
  
“I got pink-slipped?”  
  
“Why did you get pink-slipped?”  
  
“I was sorta suicidal and then I slit my wrist. I guess I passed out, because when I woke up, I was in the hospital.”  
  
The doctor looked at him. “You were sorta suicidal and you slit your wrist.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“ _Sorta_ suicidal.”  
  
Jim gave him a blank look.  
  
“Can you explain that to me? Were you trying to kill yourself?”  
  
He sighed. “It wasn’t… It wasn’t an attempt, but it wasn’t _not_ an attempt either, ya know? I wanted to die. I knew I probably wouldn’t. But I still gave it my best effort.” He gave a stilted laugh and a weak smile.  
  
“Why do you want to die, Jim?”  
  
He snapped. “Because life sucks and everyone dies anyway so why should I have to live?”  
  
“You said that last time too. ‘Everyone dies.’ Now, it says here in your file that you are a Tarsus IV survivor—“  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
He nodded. “That’s okay. But you’re going to have to eventually. If not here with me, then later on with your therapist.”  
  
“I don’t have a therapist.”  
  
“We’ll set you up with one.”  
  
“I don’t want one,” he said. “I’ve had four therapists since Tarsus. None of them have accomplished a damn thing. Clearly. Therapy doesn’t fucking work and there’s no point in trying.”  
  
“Therapy is not an instant cure, but it _does_ work. You just have to give it time. A therapist isn’t going to solve all your problems in a single one-hour session.”  
  
“It’s been four years.”  
  
“And have you been in therapy all that time?”  
  
He said nothing.  
  
“How much help did you actually get after Tarsus?”  
  
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Uh, I had three therapists right off the bat, one right after the other. None of them worked out. That lasted about a year and a half. Then I was sixteen and I missed too many appointments so my case got closed, and Mom just didn’t bother to find me a new therapist. Then in senior year I got caught getting high in the school bathroom and the school got involved and I was in jail for like, a month, and they set me set up with a therapist there. That lasted for like six weeks. I kept ditching appointments and my case got closed again.”  
  
“Why didn’t you go to your appointments?”  
  
“’Cause they didn’t do any good! What the hell is talking about it going to accomplish?”  
  
“It may help you process some of your trauma, Jim.”  
  
“I don’t have ‘trauma’.”  
  
The doctor just stared at him. “Yes, you do, Jim. What happened to you back on Tarsus was traumatic. You need to process what happened and how it affected you in order to move on. Now, I don’t have the notes from any of your therapists, but just going out on a limb here—after Tarsus, did you struggle with disordered eating?”  
  
Jim glared daggers and kept his mouth firmly closed.  
  
“The nurses check to see how much of your plate you clear off after each meal. You ate pretty well yesterday, so I’m not going to put you on a portion-controlled diet, but I want you to let me know if anything changes. I’m going to tell the nurses to keep an eye on that.”  
  
“Alright. You do that.”  
  
The doctor sighed. “Jim. Do you want to get better?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you want to get better?”  
  
“Of course I—“ Do? Don’t?  
  
_Did_ he want to get better?  
  
He frowned slightly. The doctor gathered up his stylus and padd and stood. “I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”  
  
He left.  
  
Then it was 4:00 and time for psychotherapy B. They all filed into the back group room with M’Benga.  
  
“Today we’re going to talk about anger management skills.”  
  
And Jim zoned out.

* * *

Visiting hours were from five to seven. Jim was dreading it.  
  
He kept glancing at the door all throughout dinner and then after, when he and Leonard were teaching Spock poker and then the Vulcan went on to utterly destroy them at it.  
  
He didn’t come and he didn’t come and he didn’t come.  
  
It was six o’clock now. Why hadn’t he come?  
  
What if he didn’t come?  
  
A nurse approached their table, and Jim nearly jumped out of his seat. “You have a visitor.”  
  
“Okay. I’ll just—“  
  
“Not you, Mr. Kirk. The visitor is here to see Mr. Spock.”  
  
Leonard and Jim’s eyes swiveled over to him in surprise. Spock had a visitor?  
  
He seemed just as surprised as they were, though he hid it better. “I see. May I inquire as to who it is?”

“Your father.”  
  
His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. He inhaled just slightly faster than normal. Jim noticed. Bones didn’t.  
  
Spock nodded and stood, following the nurse to the door. An older Vulcan man was admitted, and he and Spock went to the corner table where Jim had sat with Frank yesterday.  
  
“Hello, Father,” Spock said.  
  
“Hello, Spock,” he said. “You have been in this facility for a full Terran week now.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Has your condition improved?”  
  
“Negative.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“The staff does not seem to know how to handle my case.”  
  
“Why?”

“I am Vulcan. They are treating me like a human. They insist on questioning me about my emotions. In addition, I am not allowed to have incense to burn while meditating as it presents a fire hazard. It is against facility rules.”  
  
“How have you been meditating?”  
  
“Poorly,” he admitted. It was an understatement. He had not been able to achieve anything deeper than a very shallow meditative state since arriving here. His mind was too cluttered, too chaotic. His thoughts moved far too fast for him to order. The environment only worsened the problem.  
  
“I will see to it that they make an exception in the case of your incense.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Have the staff been addressing your telepathic needs sufficiently?”  
  
“No. As I said, they are treating me as a human. I would prefer to be discharged and placed in the care of Vulcan mind healers.”  
  
“The mind healers are under immense strain as of late. There are very few of them left. In addition, your condition is a human one. A Vulcan healer would be at a loss as to aiding you. Vulcan neurophysiology is sufficiently different from that of humans that trauma affects us in completely different ways and is processed and handled through different means. The disorder that you have does not exist on Vulcan. You must see human doctors.”  
  
“The human doctors are not helping. Their care is xenophobically ignorant at best and malpractice at worst. They ignore the impact of my telepathy on my condition and put too much emphasis on my emotions, which are irrelevant.”  
  
“I see,” Sarek said thoughtfully. He leaned back in his chair and studied his son. “I shall get you a new doctor.”  
  
“I doubt a different human doctor will be any improvement. Their psychological training would be the same.”  
  
“I do not intend to replace one ignorant human with another. Your next doctor will be a Betazoid.”  
  
“A Betazoid?”  
  
“Yes. Their species is telepathic as well as empathic. They will be uniquely suited to addressing both your telepathy and your emotions.”  
  
“My emotions do not need addressed.”  
  
“If that were true, you would not be in here, my son.”  
  
Spock’s hands curled into fists. “I am in here because you threatened to disown me otherwise.”  
  
“You needed help and refused to seek it without proper incentive. My actions were logical.”  
  
“Your actions were manipulative.”  
  
“For a good reason. Your health is paramount to me, Spock.”  
  
“Or you were simply ashamed that I developed a human emotional disorder and you wished to remove me from your presence.”  
  
“That is not true.”  
  
“You did not even let me try to see a mind healer.”

“It would have accomplished nothing. You are being illogical, my son.”  
  
“Is that why you put me in here?”  
  
Sarek stood. “This visit is concluded. I will have your new doctor arranged to be here by tomorrow. I bid you farewell.”  
  
“Farewell, Sarek.”  
  
He paused for just a second before heading to the door. “You are beginning to remind me of your brother.”  
  
Spock felt icy rage twist in his gut. His father left, and he was clenching his fists so tight that little crescents of green blood began to appear underneath his fingernails.  
  
He reminded him of his brother. His emotion, illogical, rebel brother who got banned from the planet. It had been a clever insult. Sarek had managed to use his one son’s name as an insult against the other, thus degrading both of them at once. Spock wasn’t sure who he was actually angry for: himself or Sybok.  
  
He went back to join Jim and Leonard, dimly aware that he looked the very picture of cold fury.  
  
“So how’d that go?” Jim asked bravely.  
  
“Fine,” Spock said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s totally normal to have had multiple therapists, especially if you have a more unique case. I’ve had four therapists so far, and I know my current one won’t be my last since I’ll be moving soon.


	9. Second Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna say that I love how interactive this fic is becoming and how many comments it’s getting, especially from other people talking about their experiences receiving mental health care. Stuff like that is exactly why I wrote this

“Okay. Jim,” Christine said. “Your goal for today was to work on discharge planning. How’d that work out?”  
  
“Not well,” he said. “The doctor doesn’t sound like he’s gonna discharge me any time soon. And even if he did, I don’t have any place to go after I leave here. My uncle was supposed to come by today and give me his final decision on whether he was kicking me out or not, but he just didn’t.”  
  
“Talk to M’Benga about that tomorrow. He can give you a list of homeless shelters in the area. You’ll have to wait to see if one of them has a bed available for you, though,” she said. “And next we have… Leonard. Did you accomplish your goal for today?”  
  
“Yeah. I said I would go to groups and I went to groups.”  
  
“That’s great. Okay. And Gaila, how about you?”  
  
“My goal was to study, and I did—a little bit,” she said. “It’s just so hard. I still have to concentrate really hard to understand Standard, and that makes studying like twice as hard as it would be if the books were in Orion.”  
  
“We can have a translator come in tomorrow and help you if you want.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Christine smiled. “I’ll have that arranged. Scotty?”  
  
The man smiled broadly. “Not only did I find an apartment, but the old doctor says they’ll be discharging me tomorrow.”  
  
He got a chorus of congratulations and exclamations.  
  
“And what about you, Hikaru? Did you get in any fights today?”  
  
“Nope,” he said.  
  
“Do you think maybe you can set a more progressive goal for tomorrow?”  
  
He shrugged. “Like what?”  
  
“Like going to groups, or taking a shower, or staying on your medications… Something like that.”  
  
“I’m not on any medications.”  
  
“Okay. Well tonight, how about you think about what you want your goal for tomorrow to be, okay?”  
  
“Okay.” He shrugged again.

* * *

“Are you going to sleep tonight?” Jim asked.  
  
“Not if I can help it,” Spock said.  
  
Jim dug out the padd from under his mattress and tossed it across the room to him. “Here. You can play games on it. It’s not much, but it beats staring at the ceiling all night.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“No problem.”  
  
He laid back down on his bed and pulled the covers up. The lights were on automatic timers, already off for the night. There was no switch, and they wouldn’t come back on until 7:00 a.m. He closed his eyes.  
  
A minute passed.  
  
Two minutes.  
  
Five.  
  
Thirty.  
  
“So tell me about Starfleet,” Jim said. “What was it like?”  
  
“It proved to be a unique and invaluable learning experience. It provided me with scientific opportunities previously unimagined. The explorative nature of the ‘Fleet allowed for a vast array of new discoveries.”  
  
“You were a scientist?”  
  
“Indeed. I was Chief Science Officer aboard the Enterprise. I supervised the twenty-eight different laboratories that were aboard the starship. I had final control over all experiments conducted there.”  
  
“That sounds cool. What’s your specialty?”  
  
“I did not have one.”  
  
“Seriously? Come on, there has to be some field of science that you like better than all the others.”  
  
“There is not. That was one of the principal factors in my decision to apply to Starfleet’s Academy as well as the Vulcan Science Academy. Had I gone to the VSA, I would have been forced to choose a specialty. In Starfleet, I am free to practice in every field of science, without neglecting any of them. In fact, it is encouraged.”  
  
“You’re an indecisive man, Mr. Spock,” he teased. “That’s sorta like what Surak said though. ‘Wide experience increases wisdom.’ You took the path that would give you the widest possible experience.”  
  
Spock blinked. “Indeed.”  
  
“Really, it was more logical to go to Starfleet than the VSA.”  
  
“I confess your reasoning has never occurred to me but I find it… sound.”  
  
Jim smirked. “See? I can be logical.” He rolled over to face Spock better. “But there seriously isn’t any field you like more than all the others? Even slightly?”  
  
“…I am somewhat partial to astrophysics. But only marginally. Not enough so that I would be willing to forego all other fields of study to focus on it alone.”  
  
He grinned. “See? I knew you had a favorite.”  
  
“Vulcans do not have favorites, as favoritism is illogical.”  
  
“Ah, okay.” He was still grinning, and Spock could see it in the dark.  
  
“I was not making a jest,” he said.  
  
“I know. Dead serious. Vulcans don’t have favorites. Got it.”  
  
“You do not sound as though you believe me.”  
  
“Oh yeah?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Well,” Jim drawled. “I guess I’d have to say I don’t believe you.”  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“Because I’m your favorite patient here.”  
  
He quirked up an eyebrow. “What led you to that conclusion?”  
  
“You spend 33.78% of your free time with me. You’d probably spend more if I was with other people less. And,” he said. “You made me a Valentines’ Day card.”  
  
“I made _a_ Valentines’ Day card and I happened to give it to you.”  
  
“Ouch, harsh. And here I was thinking you liked me.”  
  
“I do like you.”  
  
His eyes lit up enchantingly, and he let out a laugh. “Oh, really?”  
  
“In that I enjoy spending time with you.”  
  
“I’m wounded, Spock, I’m wounded.”  
  
“That is false. You are fine.”  
  
“Wow, okay. See if I play chess with you tomorrow.”  
  
Spock floundered. “If I have caused offense—“  
  
“Relax, I was joking. Of course I’m going to play chess with you. What else would I do all day?”  
  
“… Perhaps engage in conversation with Dr. McCoy or flirt with Gaila.”  
  
“Ooh, you almost sound jealous, Spock.”  
  
“I assure you I am not.”  
  
He rolled his eyes playfully. “Okay.”  
  
“I am not.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“I fail to see why you do not believe me. I am not nor have I ever been jealous—“  
  
“Spock, I was teasing you. And besides, you know you love me.”  
  
“Ah,” he said dryly.  
  
“Oh come on, _that_ you roll with?”  
  
“I gather you desired to elicit a stronger reaction?”  
  
“Well yeah!”  
  
“What would you have done had I said I really did love you?”  
  
He gaped. He felt like his brain was buffering, struggling to comprehend even the _possibility_ of Spock saying that.  
  
“I’m going to bed,” he said, rolling over to turn away from him, face burning.

* * *

He only slept four hours before waking and stumbling his way out to the day room in search of coffee. Then the nurses made him go back to bed, saying the day room didn’t open until six.  
  
He sulked.  
  
Spock was meditating, or trying to at least, so he didn’t even have anyone to talk to. The light was still off, so he couldn’t draw or write in his notepad, and there was literally nothing else to do.  
  
He laid down in bed.  
  
He stared at the ceiling.  
  
His wrist itched, but he wasn’t going to tear the wrap off to scratch it. Nope. He wasn’t even going to think about it, actually. He was going to think about something totally different.  
  
There was a faint nightlight coming from a vent near the floor, so the room’s occupants could get up and go to the bathroom in the night without tripping over their own feet. It cast the room in the faintest blue glow. Spock looked serene, angelic even, though Jim knew better than to judge by the surface.  
  
He could see the dark drops of dried blood still on his blanket.  
  
He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to cut himself. It had been a one-time, two-time thing. He was going to stop now, forever. He was fine. He was just bored, and so his mind was wandering, and unfortunately, his mind had a lot of dark places to go to lately.  
  
He could go to the nurses’ station and talk to them.  
  
No. He was just bored. He wasn’t going to cut himself. He was fine.  
  
He was fine.  
  
His breathing was getting slightly ragged, but he didn’t touch the bandage, didn’t tear it off like he wanted to, didn’t rip into his skin and feel the burning pain—  
  
He was fine.  
  
He didn’t need to go to the nurses’ station. He wasn’t seriously going to cut himself. He was just bored.  
  
He was just bored.  
  
He bit his lip so hard he drew blood, and that was enough, that would be enough, and—  
  
He threw off the covers and jumped out of bed, heading to the nurses’ station.

* * *

Jim picked at his pancakes, barely touching them. He’d had five cups of coffee that morning. His eyes had huge dark bags under them. His hair was ruffled and sticking up in all directions.  
  
He looked like shit. He felt like shit.  
  
He abandoned the pancakes and crunched into a strip of bacon.  
  
“Not hungry today?” Bones asked.  
  
“Not really,” he said.  
  
“Can I have your eggs then? I’m starvin’.”  
  
“No you aren’t,” Jim snapped.  
  
“Geez, sorry, I was just—“  
  
“No, I’m sorry, I—Here.” He scraped the scrambled eggs off his plate onto Bones’.  
  
“Thanks,” he said, giving Jim a suspicious look.  
  
The nurses came around and Jim took his antidepressant.  
  
They had goals group. Jim said he wanted to make his bed today. Christine smiled at him.  
  
M’Benga led them all to the back group room for psychotherapy, and they took their seats.  
  
“We’re going to have a guest with us today,” he said. “Her name is Dr. Von Muteer, and she’s a Betazoid specialist here to work with Mr. Spock. Dr. Muteer?”  
  
“Please, call me Von,” she smiled.  
  
“Alright. I trust we’ll all make our new guest feel welcome.”  
  
Jim’s hand shot up. “Is she here ‘cause you were doing such a terrible job with Spock?”  
  
M’Benga ignored him. “Let’s start group. How is everybody feeling today? Who would like to go first?”  
  
“Ooh!” Gaila raised her hand in a mimicry of Jim. “I feel excited! And nervous, but like, only a little.”  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“I’m meeting with a translator today to help me get some real studying done for my citizenship test. She’s a cadet at Starfleet Academy who’s just doing volunteer work here at the hospital. I hear she’s like, scary smart.”  
  
“That sounds great! I’m sure she’ll be a big help to you.”  
  
“Either that or think I’m stupid,” she joked with a see-through smile.  
  
“She won’t think your stupid. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to do what you’ve done. It proves you’re a driven and intelligent individual, Gaila. Don’t ever let go of that.”  
  
She gave a small smile and blushed green.  
  
“What about you, Scotty? How are you feeling today?”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“You know I don’t like that word, Mr. Scott.”  
  
He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but it was close. “I guess I’ll be excited then too. I’m goin’ home today. Can’t wait.”  
  
“That’s great. Leonard?”  
  
“I’m okay.”  
  
“’Okay’ isn’t an emotion.”  
  
“I’m happy as a clam, then. That good enough for you, doc?”  
  
“Is that how you really feel?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Leonard.”  
  
“Listen, does it matter? I’m already getting discharged. I only have a few days here left.”  
  
“If you show signs of getting worse, I’m afraid we’re going to have to hold you for longer.”  
  
“But I need to catch that plane to Pheonix on Wednesday.”  
  
“You can find another rehab clinic.”  
  
Leonard scowled. “I feel crappy. Is that better?”  
  
“Why do you feel crappy, Leonard?”  
  
“’Cause you people are threatening to screw up my life all over again!”  
  
“How did you feel before that?”  
  
“Still crappy!”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“’Cause I woke up on the wrong side of bed and said to myself, ‘Hm, I think I’ll have a terrible day today for no good reason at all’ and so that’s what I’m doing.”  
  
“Okay Leonard. We’ll talk later. Jim?”  
  
“I feel tired.”  
  
“Are you having trouble sleeping?”  
  
“Not usually, but I did last night, yeah.”  
  
“Okay. Tell that to your doctor today, and he can get you a prescription to take sleeping pills as needed while you’re here. If it happens again, just come up to the nurses’ station and ask for a pill.”  
  
“Okay,” he said.  
  
He had done it. It had been believable. He had ‘participated’ in group without having to talk about wanting to cut himself that morning.  
  
He had actually done it.  
  
“Hikaru? How do you feel?”  
  
“Bored.”  
  
“Okay. That’s understandable. There are coloring pages and board games out in the day room if you want something to do between groups. Or I have some self-help books I can loan you.”  
  
“No thanks,” he said.  
  
“Von, the floor is yours,” M’Benga said.  
  
“Thank you, but I would prefer to speak to Spock privately,” the woman said.


	10. Von

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> S’thaupi = the “beyond state” of Vulcan meditation  
> V’ree’lat = literally searching/sorting. To order your thoughts and clear your mind

Von walked Spock into a private office and gestured for him to sit down. He did, posture ramrod straight and robotic.  
  
She smiled at him.  
  
“There is no need to be nervous, Spock,” she said.  
  
“I am not nervous.”  
  
Her smile twisted a little with sympathy. “I’m not going to ask you how you feel. You don’t need to talk about your emotions here. You don’t even need to acknowledge their existence if you don’t want, but you shouldn’t be ashamed of them. All people feel. You aren’t the only Vulcan to have needed professional help.”  
  
“But I am the only Vulcan to have developed the human condition of PTSD.”  
  
“Yes. That’s true. But you need to remember that you’re human, too. And you are far from alone as a human in your situation.”  
  
Spock said nothing.  
  
“How have you been meditating?”  
  
“Poorly.”  
  
“Have you been able to achieve s’thaupi?”  
  
“Not recently.”  
  
“How long has it been?”  
  
“One year, six months, seven point zero two days.”  
  
She nodded. “Since the destruction of Vulcan.”  
  
“Since the death of my mother.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow at the correction. “Were you close with her?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Tell me about her.”  
  
He swallowed. “She was human. She was a translator employed by the Vulcan embassy on Earth. It was there that she met my father.”  
  
“Did she spend a lot of time with you as a child?”  
  
“Yes. Moreso than was the norm for a Vulcan parent. I believe she found it emotionally fulfilling. She seemed to think it was important for my sake as well.”  
  
“She raised you as a human mother would have. She didn’t try to act like a Vulcan.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“What did you think of that?”  
  
“…My peers thought it disgraceful and to my detriment. A disadvantage of my upbringing. She tried to cultivate an emotional connection between us. They thought less of me because of this.”  
  
“Yes, but what did you think?”  
  
Spock paused. Blinked.  
  
“I... I loved her. I never said. I pretended not to in order to escape further scorn from my peers.” He bowed his head slightly. “I hurt her to preserve myself.”  
  
“You were a child. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”  
  
“Even while a child, as a Vulcan I was trained to always consider the logical consequences of my every action. I knew I was hurting her. I did it anyway. My actions are unforgiveable.”  
  
“No. No, Spock, they aren’t. Your mother sounds like she was an amazing woman. I’m sure she understood. She wouldn’t want you to continue blaming yourself after all this time.”  
  
Spock was silent. That was true. The Lady Amanda had always, at her core, wanted her son to be… happy.  
  
Spock wasn’t sure if he could be. He didn’t know if he wanted to be. He loved his mother and wanted to abide by her wishes. But he respected his culture and the ways of his people as well.  
  
And he did not want to share Sybok’s fate.  
  
Happiness was out of the question.  
  
He couldn’t help but wonder if he was a coward for thinking that way.  
  
“And what about your father? Are you close with him?”  
  
“He is a properly Vulcan parent and as such, does not need nor desire emotional closeness with his offspring.”  
  
“Oh. Of course. My mistake,” Von said. “About how frequent is your contact with him?”  
  
“Since I have been admitted to this facility, I have seen him once. Before, we worked together at the embassy every weekday.”  
  
“Does he ever talk about your mother?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do you ever try to broach the subject with him?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why not? It might help you both find closure.”  
  
“Our relationship is not of that sort. It is purely professional in nature.”  
  
“Okay. So when he came to visit you while you were here, what was that about?”  
  
“He expressed displeasure that I had been in here a full Terran week without any notable improvement. I explained to him that the quality of care was lacking. He said that he would get me a new doctor.”  
  
“Was that the end of the discussion?”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“What else was said?”

“We had a debate over my reasons for admission.”  
  
“What were they?”

“My father forced the matter by threatening to disown me unless I came here.” Like he had with Sybok. Sybok, who had been banished from his homeworld, rejected by his people, rejected by his father, and was now one of the most wanted criminals in both the Federation and the Klingon Empire.  
  
Spock vaguely wondered what he was up to nowadays. One could never be certain. He was far more unpredictable than even any human Spock had ever met.  
  
“Why would he do that?” Von asked, snapping him back to the present.  
  
“He claims to be concerned for my health.”  
  
“But you don’t believe that.”  
  
“No. I believe he is ashamed of my human failings and wished to remove me from the public eye, especially in connection to him and his work.”  
  
“He’s very concerned with appearances then?”  
  
“Not particularly. He simply enjoys disapproving of me. I believe I am his greatest disappointment. Michael believes otherwise.”  
  
“Who is Michael?”

“My sister.”  
  
“She believes otherwise. What do you mean by that? What does she believe?”  
  
“That it is she who is Sarek’s greatest disappointment.”  
  
“Ah,” Von said. “So would you say that Sarek is a positive person in your life?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Okay. I see. Um, I can make it so that he isn’t allowed to visit you again, especially if it was distressing.”  
  
“That will not be necessary. I did experience distress. In addition, I believe barring him from visiting will cause additional strife between us following my discharge.”  
  
“He doesn’t have to know that you requested it. I can have the nurses make up some rule about why he isn’t allowed to visit should he come by again—which he might not.”  
  
Spock considered it for a moment. “That is amenable. Thank you.”  
  
She smiled. “No problem.” And he was reminded of Jim. “Now, back to your meditation. A healthy Vulcan of your age should be meditating at least an hour every day to properly engage in v’ree’lat. But under your circumstances, I want you to be meditating two to three hours each day. Do you have everything here that you need for it?”  
  
“No. My father got an exception made to allow me to use a fire pot to burn incense, but I still lack a meditation stone and mat. In addition, the facility has given me a roommate—a human—due to a shortage of individual rooms.”  
  
“I’ll have a stone and mat be brought in for you. Now, your roommate. Does he stay in the room when you try to meditate?”  
  
“Some of the time.”  
  
“Can you ask him to leave?”  
  
“…In truth, I do not find his presence disruptive. He is quiet and respectful. It is… almost comforting, to not be alone.”  
  
“Do you have trouble being alone?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Are you frequently alone?”  
  
“No. I spend a significant portion of my time working at the embassy among other Vulcans. The biggest problem is at night.”  
  
“Has that changed since you’ve arrived here and been assigned a roommate?”  
  
“Somewhat. Not significantly.”  
  
“Have you been having trouble sleeping?”  
  
Vulcans cannot lie.  
  
“Yes,” he admitted.  
  
“Okay. I’m going to prescribe you sleeping pills to be administered every single night, unless you’re already asleep when the nurses come around, but I doubt that’ll happen. I think we made good progress today, but before I let you leave, I just want to give you a bit of homework. I want you to spend at least a half hour of your meditation today sorting through just positive memories of your mother. And nothing about her death, okay? Can you do that?”  
  
He nodded numbly.

* * *

He joined Jim and Leonard where they were playing rummy out in the day room.

“How’d your meeting with Doc Butter go?” Leonard asked, not looking up from his cards.  
  
“Her name is Dr. Buteer,” Spock corrected. “It was adequate.”  
  
“Adequate good or adequate bad?” Jim asked.  
  
“ _Adequate_ adequate.”  
  
Jim laughed. Just then, Leonard began laying out his cards in sets until there was nothing left in his hand. “Gin,” he said, grinning. Jim swore.  
  
“Y’know, if we had money to gamble with in here, I’d own your ass by now,” Leonard said while the two of them counted up their points.  
  
“Hey, I could still catch up. And we aren’t gambling.”  
  
“Thank your lucky stars,” he said smugly.  
  
“Shut up. Asshole,” Jim said, with no heat behind it. Leonard smirked and gathered up the cards, shuffling them all and dealing all three of them in.  
  
“How did your meeting with Dr. M’Benga go?” Spock asked conversationally.  
  
“Typical social worker bullshit. He thinks he knows everything and he can cure all that ails me if I would just talk to him for half an hour,” Leonard said. “And honestly, I’ll let him think that if it means I can get out of this hellhole.”  
  
“Aw, but aren’t you gonna miss me, Bones?”

He rolled his eyes. “I already gave my comm number, kid, what more do you want? A marriage proposal?”  
  
Spock looked between then, a strange feeling twisting in his side. “You two have initiated a romantic relationship?”  
  
“God no,” Leonard said.  
  
“He wishes,” Jim added.  
  
A feeling strangely like relief flooded through Spock’s chest. Peculiar. He would have to analyze it as part of his meditation today.  
  
Jim smiled at him and Spock felt warm all over.

* * *

They ditched recreational therapy again to play chess in their room, which they both found to be far more stimulating than any kindergarten-level activity Christine could come up with.  
  
They were ditching, yes, but they were also doing their own form of recreational therapy.  
  
And Jim was absolutely creaming Spock.  
  
He had advanced his pawns into a zigzag pattern two rows up from their initial places and then some of them further, creating an all but impenetrable shield across the board. Both of them were forced to rely solely on their knights and bishops to cross it and attack. And, unfortunately for Spock, the knight was Jim’s favorite piece—the most unpredictable and chaotic piece on the board. He relied on his knights the way Spock relied on the objectively, logically strongest piece—the queen.  
  
He was decimating him.  
  
Spock was beginning to see Jim’s perspective and understand the attractiveness of being outsmarted. This human’s mind was unlike any he had ever encountered before, sharp and bright and dynamic as possible. He imagined his thoughts must flow like a swiftly shifting current in a river: ever-fast and ever-changing.  
  
He should not be imagining what it would be like to touch Jim’s mind. They hardly knew each other. A meld would be completely inappropriate. Vulcans did not engage in such acts casually.  
  
He found it difficult to divert his thoughts to any other matter, however. He must meditate on that. It was a flaw in his control.  
  
Spock began disassembling Jim’s defenses methodically, moving in a perfectly logical order from left to right across the board, snatching up pawn after pawn.  
  
He removed one from the center of the board, and three moves later, Jim called checkmate, several of his pieces having converged on Spock’s king discreetly and only blocked by his own pawns and single spaces. Pawns that Spock had just eliminated.  
  
He had essentially been manipulated into trapping himself.  
  
Jim leaned back in his chair and smirked. He was gorgeous. He was brilliant.

He was everything.  
  
“Kiss me,” Spock said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The facility I was at offered to ban my parents from visiting too, that’s a real thing they do if they don’t think it’s good for you to be around them. But my parents were ultimately allowed to visit in the end because I knew they’d kill me if I said that they couldn’t and I had to go back and live with them after I left there.


	11. Kisses and Cars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim is so stupid in this chapter that I’m genuinely sorry

Jim choked on his own spit. “ _What?!”_  
  
“Kiss me,” Spock repeated, suddenly sure of himself. He wanted this. It had been impulsive and he hadn’t been thinking when he first said it, but it was so clear now. Jim should kiss him. Jim should always be kissing him.  
  
“You’ve never been kissed before though.”  
  
“You can be my first.”  
  
Jim visibly paled. “Do you even like me? I mean, we just met! Your first kiss shouldn’t be someone you don’t even like.”  
  
“Was it not you who originally suggested I ‘expand my horizons’ sexually?”  
  
“Yeah, but that was before—“ Before he gave a shit. “Look. Okay. Yes, I said that, but then I got to know you, and you seem like a really sweet guy. Your first kiss should be with someone special. You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t have sex casually, you deserve better for your first time.” He was staring at the ground now, face burning.  
  
“I was not suggesting sex. I merely asked for a kiss.”  
  
“Yeah, but still. It’s your first.”  
  
“Why do you now give me the opposite advice that you gave me earlier?”  
  
“Because I care about you, asshole!”  
  
“Then kiss me,” he said, looking at Jim with fathomless dark eyes, and _fuck_ , it was hard not to.  
  
“I—I mean… Spock,” he said helplessly, doing everything he could not to stare at the man’s lips because then he really would kiss him. The Vulcan looked incredibly kissable; he was genuinely surprised no one had tried it before.  
  
“Your words contradict each other. You first say that my first kiss should come from someone who cares about me, and then you say that you will not kiss me _because_ you care about me. I will abide by your decision, but I do not see your logic.”  
  
“I guess maybe it doesn’t make sense. But—“ he sighed. “You’re special. You deserve someone better than me.”  
  
“I have found no one better than you.”  
  
“Then wait ‘til you’re out of the psych ward, geez Spock—“  
  
“No. I mean ever. You are the most extraordinary being I have ever met. I assure you I am not ‘settling.’ I want you to kiss me.”  
  
Jim looked at him in wonder. “You really mean that?”  
  
“Vulcans do not lie,” he said, moving forward until he was right before Jim. “Kiss me.”  
  
Jim couldn’t possibly turn him down.  
  
He closed his eyes and brushed his lips gently against Spock’s, chaste and careful and not asking for anything more. Spock hesitantly threaded his fingers through Jim’s hair, his movements shy and inexperienced. Jim smiled against the kiss.  
  
Spock’s tongue darted into his mouth, in and out quicksilver fast, testing the waters. Jim suckled on his bottom lip, encouraging, and Spock let out a soft little moan that went straight to his groin. He ran his tongue over Spock’s lips, and then pulled back, just slightly.  
  
“Do you want me to—“

“Yes.”  
  
Jim chuckled and slipped his tongue into that delicious wet heat, slowly familiarizing himself with Spock’s mouth. The Vulcan wrapped his arms around him, pressing him closer, and Jim obliged.  
  
Spock’s tongue reached out to stroke at Jim’s and Jim grabbed him by the waist, holding him flush against him. Jim mouthed at him hungrily, trailing kisses down his jawline. He traced the pointed shell of Spock’s ear and laved it with his tongue, making him shiver. He moved down further to lay kisses along the Vulcan’s throat, Spock’s breaths coming just that little bit faster.  
  
He tugged back the v-line of his scrubs just slightly so that the bruise would be hidden later and started to suck. Spock sucked in a breath, and then he felt a rigid hardness against his thigh.  
  
Jim pulled back suddenly, moving several feet away. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“  
  
“Jim, it is alright—“  
  
“No, no it’s not. You just asked for a kiss, and I—“  
  
“I enjoyed what you were doing.”  
  
He froze. “Wait, what?”  
  
“There is no need to apologize.”  
  
“You asked for a kiss.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”  
  
“You did not. I was the one who propositioned you.”  
  
“Yeah, for a kiss! I was way out of line, I was moving too fast, I am so sorry Spock—“  
  
“Jim.”  
  
“Yeah?” he looked up nervously.  
  
“I am fine,” he said. “You did not pressure me into anything. I assure you, you would be unsuccessful if you tried.”  
  
Jim looked at him. Nodded. Blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Good. Good. So we’re good?”  
  
“Yes, Jim. We are good.”  
  
He smiled.

* * *

The volunteer translator showed up a little bit before lunch. She was drop-dead gorgeous and even more brilliant than she was beautiful. She sat down next to Gaila in the day room and smiled at her, knocking the poor Orion speechless.  
  
She immediately set to work translating Gaila’s textbooks for her, speaking Orion words softly, perfectly. Gaila was blushing hard.  
  
Jim watched them from across the day room with a small, cocky smile on his face. “You can actually see her falling head over heels.”  
  
“Too much of that going around if you ask me,” Leonard said.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
He looked at him like he was an idiot. “You and that hobgoblin you’re playing house with.”  
  
“We aren’t ‘playing house.’ The facility assigned me to be his roommate.”  
  
“Uh-huh. As if you wouldn’t be sneaking into his room every night either way.”  
  
“Hey, it’s not like that.”  
  
“Sure it ain’t.”  
  
“I’m serious. We really aren’t screwing.”  
  
“Then you’re in deep shit, kid. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”  
  
“What? What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, if you were screwing, then I could assume it was just another physical fling for you like always, but if you haven’t even touched the guy and you still look at him like that, then you’re a goner.”  
  
“I don’t look at him like anything. He’s just a friend. I look at him the same way I look at you.”  
  
“Sure you do.”  
  
“I’m serious, Bones. I don’t fall in love. Never have, never will.”  
  
Leonard raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “I never said nothing about love.”  
  
Jim froze. “Fuck you, asshole,” he said, gathering up his tray and leaving to the sound of Bones’ laughter.

* * *

They played a game of Sorry for the second recreational therapy that day. The volunteer joined them, and introduced herself as Nyota Uhura. Jim blatantly flirted with her, and she blatantly ignored him.  
  
In favor of Gaila. Who threw a triumphant grin at Jim when she wasn’t looking.  
  
Jim seethed. It seemed she had won this round.  
  
Whatever, he got to kiss Spock, so who even cared.  
  
Speaking of Spock, the Vulcan was being even quieter than usual, despite Christine’s best efforts to get him to participate in the group discussion. Jim decided to ask him what was wrong later. He had only been here two days, but already Spock was more comfortable talking to him than the nurses or social workers.  
  
For some reason he felt weirdly nervous about that possibly changing. He hoped that kiss hadn’t scared Spock off. The last thing he wanted to do was alienate the Vulcan.

* * *

“Today we’re going to talk about triggers,” M’Benga said, and Jim rolled his eyes. This was gonna suck, he knew it. “If you had to define a trigger to a kindergartener, what would you say?”  
  
“Something that makes you feel like shite,” Scotty said.  
  
“Whatever it is that sets you off,” Leonard said.  
  
“A trigger, psychologically speaking, can be defined as something that causes a severe and negative emotional reaction or causes one to relapse into their addiction.”  
  
“Negative. You’ve all been talking about negative triggers. But what about positive triggers?” M’Benga asked. “Yes, there is such thing as positive triggers. Things that trigger good feelings. Today I want us to do a little exercise. I want you all to plan a trip. You get to take any car you want, brand new, and go anywhere you want, with anyone you choose. Now, this person can’t be famous and they can’t be dead. Those are the only stipulations. You have to actually know them. Now. Who wants to go first?”  
  
“Ooh!” Gaila said. “I will! Um, I don’t know much about Terran aircars, but it should be black and real sleek-looking. Fast, too. And I’d take my mother and we’d go to the Amazon rainforest.”  
  
“That’s quite a trip. Why the Amazon?”  
  
“It’s similar to Orion.”  
  
“You can go off-world if you want. You could actually go to Orion.”  
  
“No, I wouldn’t want that.” She shook her head.  
  
“And why is that?”  
  
She flared her nostrils. “Because Orion is a terrible place full of terrible people.”  
  
“I’m sorry. It’s good that you got out of that place,” he said. “Scotty?”  
  
“I’d take a 2254 Daystrom Windrider out to Scotland to see my family.”  
  
“That sounds great. Are you close with your family?”  
  
“Yeah, love ‘em. My pops especially.”  
  
“Good for you. It’s great that you have them as a support system. So often, our family is the best support we can have,” he said. “Leonard, why don’t you go next?”  
  
“Alright. Uh, I’d take my little girl with me and go on down to Disneyland. I always promised I would take her one day. Haven’t had the chance.”  
  
“That’s good. I hope you can keep your promise to her,” he said. “Spock?”  
  
“Vulcans do not take trips without a logical reason to do so.”  
  
M’Benga opened his mouth to protest, and Von shot him a look. “Okay. Moving on. Jim?”  
  
“Easy. I’d take a 1965 Corvette and drive it so fast I flew right off the horizon.”  
  
“Flew?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Past tense?”  
  
“I drove a car off a cliff one time.”  
  
“No, he did not. That’s the same lie he told me two days ago, only then it was a police car,” Bones said.  
  
M’Benga tilted his head. “Did you really drive a car off a cliff, Jim?”  
  
“Hell yeah I did! It was awesome.”  
  
“Did you get hurt?”  
  
“No, I jumped out at the last second. Police bot caught me.”  
  
“What made you decide to do that?”  
  
“What, to jump out?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I don’t know, I just did. I—“ he started. “I didn’t _actually_ want to die.”  
  
“So then why did you steal the car in the first place?”  
  
“I don’t know. I wanted to. Do I need a reason?”  
  
“I think you had a reason even if you aren’t aware of it, Jim,” he said. “Did anything else happen around that time?”

“Well, my brother ran away.”  
  
“And how did that make you feel?”  
  
“Shitty?”  
  
“Why’s that?”  
  
“Because…” he sighed. “I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let me. He said I was too young. Whatever that meant. I guess he just didn’t want to have to take care of some dipshit kid.”  
  
“Why did you both want to run away?”  
  
“’Cause we were living with Asshat and he was a shitbag.”  
  
“What made you think of him that way?”  
  
“The facts. He just was, alright?”  
  
“Jim… I don’t mean to be blunt, but did he abuse you?”  
  
He clenched his teeth. “No,” he spat.  
  
And if his breathing was a little fast and his face was a little red then nobody mentioned it.  
  
Gaila looked at him with sympathy or maybe it was pity and he dug his nails into his palms. The only person whose eyes didn’t have that horrible look in them was Spock.


	12. Bet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentioned child prostitution/rape.

Spock went out of his way to capture Jim’s knights right off the bat, even at the expense of two of his own pawns, a bishop, and a rook.  
  
“Oh, come on. Now that’s just rude,” Jim said.  
  
“Taking my queen within ten moves of our last game was comparably ‘rude,’ I believe.”  
  
“Well, you shouldn’t have left her undefended.”  
  
“I had you in check. It was hardly a weak position.”  
  
“You know what they say. The best defense is a good offense.”  
  
“I am unfamiliar with that phrase.”  
  
“It’s an Earth thing. It means if you have no way of peacefully defending yourself, then the best thing to do is lash out and attack your would-be attacker.”  
  
“I see now why Earth had so many wars in the past.”  
  
“Oh, come on. Like Vulcan never had any wars. I’m sure you guys were _always_ the peaceful pacifist vegetarians of space.”  
  
Spock moved a pawn imperiously. “Indeed we were.”  
  
Jim grinned and laughed. “And I thought Vulcans couldn’t lie.”  
  
“As you know, I am half-human, Jim.”  
  
“You’ve sorta got the best of both worlds, then. You’ve got Vulcan telepathy and the human ability to bullshit your way out of tough situations.”  
  
“I was not aware that ‘bullshitting’ was a skill that was looked upon favorably.”  
  
“Oh, it is, trust. I’m like, an expert at bullshitting.”  
  
“Then I will defer to your expertise.”  
  
Jim grinned at him so beautifully and Spock suppressed a heat that threatened to tinge his cheeks.  
  
Jim slid his queen to the right and Spock put a defended rook in position to take it, forcing Jim to retreat. He used a bishop to put him in check.  
  
“You use your bishops a lot, you know that?” Jim asked.  
  
“You rely an inordinate amount upon your knights.”  
  
“Yeah, but that’s intentional. I like my knights and I know how to use them. With you, you can tell that you try to use your queen as much as possible because that’s objectively the best piece or whatever, but when it comes to actually putting me in check, you almost always use your bishop.”  
  
“I have found that less proficient players are unlikely to anticipate an attack coming from a bishop.”  
  
“But I am not a ‘less proficient player.’ You said so yourself,” he said. He moved a pawn in defense, putting him out of check. “You know what I think?”  
  
“No. I would not read your mind without your consent.”  
  
He snorted. “I think you’re illogically fond of your bishops, Mr. Spock.”  
  
He rose an eyebrow in mocking condescension. “I will not sit here and be insulted.”  
  
“I dare you to win the game using a different piece.”  
  
“I do not always finish the game using the bishops. I am perfectly capable of winning without them, and have done so against you before.”  
  
“Oh really? Completely without them? Even without them defending the piece that actually has me in check?”  
  
“No,” he admitted. “But I could do so with ease. On the other hand, I doubt you could do the same in a game without your knights.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Wanna bet?”  
  
“What do you propose that we bet?”  
  
“A kiss,” he said. “We’ll play one game, me without my knights and you without your bishops. The winner gets to kiss the loser at any time and place of their choosing.”  
  
“I feel that I must remind you that physical relations are against the facility rules and a kiss in public is highly inadvisable.”  
  
“You better hope that you win if you don’t wanna get in trouble, then,” he said. “So do we have a deal?”  
  
Spock met his steely gaze head on. “Affirmative.”

* * *

Spock’s strategy was planned out twenty moves in advance and had a 98% chance of victory, based on Jim’s previous chess strategies and patterns. He began setting up a highly complicated, nearly invisible, inescapable trap the moment the game began.  
  
Jim beat him in four moves.  
  
Spock stared at the board blankly. He blinked.  
  
Jim leaned back and smirked. “The Queen’s Gambit,” he said. “That’s the problem with really advanced players. You’re so busy planning way ahead that you don’t even notice what I’m doing, and of course you don’t expect to be in jeopardy that early in the game. Honestly, I think experts are more likely to fall for it than amateurs are. You’re overconfident.”  
  
“I did not expect—“  
  
“Yeah, of course you didn’t.”  
  
“You would not be able to beat me in such a way ever again.”  
  
He shrugged. “I know. But I won this game.”  
  
Spock nodded. “Very well. You may have one kiss, at the time and location of your choosing.”  
  
He regretted making this bet, but he had lost fair and square. Now Jim would be able to hold his victory over his head indefinitely and cash it in when he least expected. The idea made Spock feel vaguely nauseous.  
  
“I think I’ll have it now,” Jim said.  
  
“Now?”  
  
“Yeah. I mean, you didn’t seriously expect me to make you kiss me in front of everybody, did you?” he asked. “Vulcans kiss with their hands, right? Can you show me how?”  
  
Wordlessly, Spock extended two fingers. Jim met them with his own almost hesitantly. An electric shock zinged between them, running from both their fingertips and up their arms, making Spock feel pleasantly warm and causing Jim to shiver. Slowly, Spock traced his fingertips along the underside of Jim’s fingers, making the electricity increase tenfold and Jim bit back what was almost a gasp.  
  
He copied the motion more confidently, running his fingers over Spock’s, and the man’s eyes closed in pleasure.  
  
“Are Vulcan hands more sensitive than humans’?” he asked quietly.  
  
“Yes,” Spock rasped. “They are one of the most sensitive areas on our bodies, as well as being the central vessel of our telepathy. Hence the cultural intimacy involved in touching them.”  
  
“Oh,” Jim said. So whatever he was feeling, Spock was feeling it even more, and better. The thought was acutely arousing. Gently, slow enough for Spock to pull away, he brought his fingers to his lips and kissed the tips of them. He suckled them for a few moments, and then ran his tongue down the seam between the two fingers, making Spock gasp and tense.  
  
“Sorry! Was that—“  
  
“No, you can—continue.”  
  
Tentatively, he drew Spock’s fingers all the way into his mouth and sucked, teasing them with his tongue, using his hand to guide them in and out. Spock looked undone, and if that didn’t make him the prettiest thing Jim had ever seen. He laved his fingers with his tongue, and finally noticed the Vulcan’s growing erection and pulled them out of his mouth to speak.  
  
“Is that—do you want me to stop?”  
  
“If the bet was to truly just be a kiss, then perhaps we should.”  
  
“Yeah, perhaps,” he said, with a small smile. He leaned forward and gave Spock a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For—playing chess with me,” he said. “For being my friend.”  
  
“Vulcans do not have friends.”  
  
He shrugged. He felt weirdly nervous, even though he had no reason to be. “Humans do. Can you be mine anyways?”  
  
Spock looked at him with the softest eyes Jim had ever seen and he really, _really_ wanted to kiss him again. “It is amenable.”

* * *

“Well, aren’t you two just sickening,” Bones said when they all sat down to dinner together.  
  
“What do you mean?” Jim asked.  
  
“Both of you, looking at each other like the other hung the damn stars, all in love and shit.”  
  
Jim’s face burned. “We aren’t in love. Right, Spock?”  
  
“…Right.”  
  
“See, Bones?” he smirked.  
  
Bones stared at him, dumbfounded. “I cannot honestly believe that you are this stupid.”  
  
He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to protest, when suddenly the day room was overcome with calls of goodbye and congratulations and good luck. Scotty waved at all of them, beaming, and a nurse unlocked the door and showed him out.  
  
The commotion died down and the three of them sat in silence for a while.  
  
“So Wednesday, huh? The day after tomorrow,” Jim said.  
  
“Yep,” Leonard replied.  
  
“I’m happy for you. I’ll miss you.”  
  
“Illogical. You intend to keep in contact post departure, do you not?” Spock said.  
  
“Yeah, but it’s not the same as actually seeing someone every day.”  
  
“I’ll miss you too, kid,” Leonard said, ruffling Jim’s hair and earning a scowl. “Don’t you go getting into any trouble once I leave here.”  
  
He huffed. “No promises.”  
  
Leonard rolled his eyes. “Keep an eye on him, will ya?” he asked Spock.  
  
“I shall endeavor to do so, doctor.”  
  
“I’m not a doctor anymore.”  
  
“What are you planning on doing once you get done with rehab?”  
  
“Dunno. Guess I’ll get my medical license back, if I can. Ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce, so I don’t really know where I can go with it. Hell, maybe I’ll join Starfleet and just get off o’ this hunk of dirt.”  
  
“Seems to be popular choice around here,” Jim said.  
  
Leonard shrugged. “It’s a good place to go when you have nowhere else to turn to. It’s a fresh start.”  
  
Jim nodded slowly, considering.

* * *

Frank showed up.  
  
Jim sat down with him at the same corner table as last time, far away from everyone else, his heart hammering in his chest. “So what’s your decision?” he asked.  
  
Frank leaned back and folded his arms. “You remember Tarsus?”  
  
Jim’s blood ran cold. “What sort of a question is that?”  
  
“I have a point, I’m getting to it. You remember how we used to get food during the famine?”  
  
“There was no ‘we.’ That was all me. You did jack shit.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “Well, anyway, I was thinking we might need to go back to that arrangement. I’ve got some debts I need paid off. Owe some money to some, uh, unsavory folks. If you help me even the score, I’ll let you stay at the farmhouse, rent free.”  
  
Jim’s fingers went numb. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. His breaths were coming short and rapid. His head felt dizzy, fuzzy… something.  
  
No. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. He wasn’t a fucking teenager anymore. He wasn’t starving. He didn’t need to…  
  
But didn’t he? He had no money. He had no place to stay. A homeless shelter would just get him bedbugs, lice, and mugged. It would set him further back in his recovery. It was the opposite environment of what he needed.  
  
He didn’t have to. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He wasn’t completely dependent on Frank anymore.  
  
Wasn’t he? What else could he do? Go live on the streets, maybe die of hypothermia one day because you can’t guarantee that a homeless shelter will always have a bed open? He’d… he’d end up starving. There wouldn’t be enough food. There wouldn’t be enough food all over again.  
  
It was just sex. He had sex all the time and it didn’t matter, he _proved_ that it didn’t matter. He could handle sex. Food and a safe place to sleep, that was all he needed, right?  
  
It was just sex.  
  
“I…” he started. “Can you give me some time? To think about it?”  
  
Frank raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Think about it. Sure,” he said. “I’ll be back on Thursday. You tell me what you’ve decided then. Can’t fucking believe this. I offer you exactly what you wanted, and you have to think about it. Always knew you were a spoiled son of a bitch.”

* * *

Jim was in a daze. He was staring blankly at the ceiling, laying on top of the covers of his hospital bed, hands clasped on top of his stomach. His too-full stomach. He felt nauseous. It was the only thing he currently felt.  
  
His ears were ringing.  
  
He was back on Tarsus and there was food in his stomach, abating the constant, gnawing pain for once, and before he was even done eating there were hands on his body, shoving him down, shoving him open.  
  
He closed his eyes hard.  
  
Frank was at the table, not looking over, finishing his own meal and what was left of Jim’s.  
  
His heartbeat was so loud. He was sure that Spock could hear it. It would probably startle him out of meditation any second now. He’d be pissed.  
  
He remembered tears and blood and retching, precious food—his _payment_ —coming back up his throat and spilling out on the livingroom floor. Frank yelling at him over the waste. Telling him if he couldn’t keep it down, then he should have let him have it instead.  
  
Don’t do it again. An unspoken threat that next time it would only be Frank who got paid.  
  
Jim was dizzy and his ears were ringing. His ears were ringing. Everything felt weird, and at the same time, he felt nothing at all.  
  
He had been on Tarsus IV for three years. Thirteen to fifteen. The famine hit in the final year. It was four months before the Federation starship came to check up on them. Early. The suffering had been cut off early.  
  
They were lucky.  
  
4000 people died. They were lucky it wasn’t more.  
  
Kodos had been killed in the fire when the colony devolved into anarchy and bloodshed and fighting over foodscraps, and that was lucky too. It was lucky Jim’s aptitude tests had been so off the charts that he was deemed useful and spared.  
  
He was just so overwhelmingly lucky.  
  
He was numb all over and cold, too, and god, he wanted to throw up. He sat up, his vision blacking out for a few seconds. He forced himself to stand and nearly fell over on the spot.  
  
Spock’s eyes blinked open.  
  
Jim couldn’t say anything. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t say anything.  
  
Spock stood up slowly, nonthreateningly, and helped Jim back to bed, sitting down next to him. He rubbed circles in his back, not saying a word. Jim dropped his head onto his shoulder.  
  
He wasn’t aware of when he started crying and he wasn’t aware of when he fell asleep either, but Spock stayed there the entire night with him.


	13. Tension

“So everybody, what’s new?” M’Benga asked casually to start off psychotherapy A. Two nursing students were sitting in and observing quietly.  
  
“I’m getting discharged today,” Gaila said excitedly. The group murmured their congratulations.  
  
“That’s great, Gaila. So what’s your plan once you leave here?” M’Benga asked.  
  
“I’m scheduled to take my Federation citizenship test two weeks from now. And, um, Ny offered to let me come room with her.”  
  
“Ny?”  
  
“Nyota. The translator from yesterday? She’s—It’s a great place. Good neighborhood, legal jobs around there and everything.”  
  
“That’s great you’re finally getting off the streets, Gaila. I’m a bit reluctant to let you leave until you at least have some job interviews lined up, though. Do you think you can work on that today?”  
  
“Well, it’s sorta hard to get a job without citizenship first.”  
  
“I’ll talk with you later one-on-one and we’ll see what we can work out. I might postpone your discharge for a little while. Sorry about that.”  
  
She deflated. “I—It’s fine.”  
  
“Anyone else?” M’Benga asked. “Spock? How ‘bout you? Care to share something with the group?”  
  
“I have nothing of import to share,” he said.  
  
“What did you do during your free time yesterday?” Von asked.  
  
“Primarily, I played chess with Jim.”  
  
“It is good that you have found positive mental stimulus during your stay here. I cannot encourage that enough. Though I would prefer if you stopped skipping recreational therapy in favor of that.”  
  
“I do not know what you mean.”  
  
Von gave him a look. “Spock, if you don’t start coming to all the groups, we’re going to have to take the chess board out of your room.”  
  
“Hey!” Jim protested.  
  
“That goes for you too,” M’Benga said. “Now Hikaru. What’s going on with you?”  
  
“Not much. Just itching to get back to the Academy. I’m missing a lot of class.”  
  
“We’ll write you out for that.”  
  
“I still don’t think I need to be here.”  
  
M’Benga looked at him, then flipped through his file. “You’ve gotten in five physical altercations this past semester?”  
  
“Yeah, so?”  
  
“Why do you think that is?”  
  
“’Cause people are stupid and need to have some sense knocked into them.”  
  
Jim snorted. M’Benga frowned at him.  
  
“And yet, other students don’t seem to the same problem with that. Has it ever occurred to you that this may be your own doing?”  
  
“Oh yeah, I know it is. I started all those fights myself,” he said. “Still don’t regret a single one of them.”  
  
“You’re on the brink of expulsion.”  
  
“Look, all those fights happened for a good goddamn reason. I just couldn’t let that shit fly.”  
  
“On one occasion, you put a man in the hospital and all he did was call fencing a girly sport.”  
  
Hikaru nodded. “Yeah.”  
  
“…We’ll have words later,” he said. “Jim. I know your uncle visited you last night. How did that go?”  
  
“Okay,” he said.  
  
“Did he give you an answer on whether he’s kicking you out or not?”  
  
“Sort of.”  
  
“What do you mean, sort of?”  
  
“He gave me a choice,” he said. “I’m not sure if I’m gonna take him up on it.”  
  
“What was the choice?”  
  
God, he hated this. “Um, I’d… Is it okay if I don’t say? It’s just… it’s—“  
  
“It’s fine, Jim. You can talk to me privately later if you want. But if this choice is causing you distress, then I think you should tell me what it is.”

* * *

He told him.  
  
M’Benga called the cops on Frank.  
  
He talked to Jim about Tarsus for three hours after lunch. He missed a rec therapy group. He started crying in the social worker’s office. M’Benga made a lot of changes and notes down in his file.  
  
Jim started talking and he just couldn’t stop, mouth running away from him, spilling his guts about his childhood, about what M’Benga forced him to acknowledge as trauma and abuse.  
  
He was traumatized.  
  
He was abused.  
  
He was set up with an outpatient therapist and a psychiatrist and told very sternly that they would be checking up to make sure he went to his appointments.  
  
He was getting help.

* * *

Jim walked out of the office just as the nurses were serving the afternoon snack, which was chips and salsa. He grabbed his portion quickly and sat down at the table with Spock and Bones, digging into the food ravenously, like it was life-saving.  
  
“Slow down, kid, you’re gonna choke,” Bones said.  
  
He shook his head and kept eating.  
  
“You were in there for a long time,” Bones said.  
  
“Three point zero seven hours,” Spock said.  
  
“Yep.” Jim crunched a chip with a generous helping of salsa on it.  
  
“What were you talking about?” Bones asked bluntly.  
  
“My uncle wanted to whore me out to pay off his debts like he did back when we lived on Tarsus IV.” He shoved an entire chip in his mouth.  
  
Spock and Bones froze. Jim kept eating.

* * *

They played chess in silence that night. Spock kept looking at him. There was no pity in his eyes, thank god, just open curiosity. Wonder.  
  
Jim whooped his ass in chess three games in a row. He was playing far more aggressively than normal, and it caught Spock unprepared, put him on the defensive.  
  
Jim pushed his way past Spock’s row of pawns with his queen and methodically wiped out half of his offensive pieces before getting taken out.  
  
“It was perhaps unwise to sacrifice your queen so early in the game,” Spock said.  
  
“Worth it,” Jim said. “You’re gonna attack me with what now? I took all your really good pieces.”  
  
“That is not true. I still have my queen, as well as a rook, knight, bishop, and five pawns.”  
  
Jim moved his rook. “You sure about that?”  
  
Spock paused. “That was a foolish move.” He captured Jim’s rook, and Jim in turn captured his knight.  
  
“Worth it,” he said again.  
  
He lost the game.

* * *

“Hey Sulu,” he said, sitting down in the day room across from him. “You’re a fencer, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” he said warily.  
  
“Those fights you keep getting in. You any good?”  
  
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”  
  
Jim laughed, short and fake. “You wanna go?”  
  
He looked around. “Look, man—“  
  
“We can do it in my room. Or yours. I’ve got a roommate who’d probably tell the nurses if we started throwing punches.”  
  
“I don’t wanna get in any more trouble than I’m already in.”  
  
“Come on, no one has to know.”  
  
“Kirk, they’d see the bruises.”  
  
“So don’t hit me in the face then,” he bit. “Come on, man. I need to let off a little steam. And I’m willing to bet that you do too.”  
  
He opened his mouth, then changed his mind and sighed. “No. Sorry, dude. I can’t.”  
  
Jim stared at him. He leaned in close and dropped his voice low. “I can make it up to you afterwards.”  
  
“ _Dude_. No.” Sulu got up and left to his room.  
  
Jim sighed and leaned back in his chair.

* * *

“Hey Bones, wanna fuck?”  
  
“No,” he said without looking up from his book.

* * *

He waited until he was sure that Spock was in a meditative trance. It was the most impatient he had ever been in his life. He was buzzed, on edge, burning hot with adrenaline. It sucked. It felt amazing. It needed release. He needed release.  
  
Spock’s breathing slowed. Jim padded over silently and waved a hand in front of his face.  
  
No reaction.  
  
He collapsed back onto his bed and ripped that goddamn wrap off his wrist. He scratched his fingernails deep across the scab. He tore off the fragile layer of dried blood that was trying to turn into skin cells. He ripped into himself mercilessly. Blood soaked under his fingernails. It smeared and ran all over his hands.  
  
He scraped and drew down deeper and bit his lip so hard that nearly started bleeding too and _god_ , it felt good. Finally. It was like a rush of breath leaving him.  
  
It wasn’t fucking enough. He scraped and dug down deeper until he had nearly as much blood flowing as he had the first time with the knife, and it was getting everywhere, it was all over his arm, his hand, his scrubs, it was getting onto the bed, it still wasn’t potent enough, he needed more, when would it finally be—  
  
Spock grabbed his wrist, a look of horror and pain on his face. Jim stared at him dumbly.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d notice,” he said.  
  
“I noticed,” he said icily.  
  
“Sorry,” Jim rasped, but he didn’t really care.  
  
“You are going to the nurses’ station.” His tone left no room for argument.

* * *

M’Benga talked to him for another half an hour. The nurses made notes in his file. He was patched up and given new scrubs to wear.  
  
A nurse popped their head into their room eight times that night. Jim was told that someone would watch him when he showers from now on, to ensure he didn’t cut himself there.

* * *

They gave Spock a sleeping pill.  
  
Jim decided not to sleep and to keep an eye on him instead. He was too wired for sleep anyway. He still wanted to cut himself.  
  
Spock’s eyelids started twitching with motion, the sign of a dream, and his face morphed into something painful and strained. He started shifting and turning in bed. Jim walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Spock,” he said quietly. “Spock, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”  
  
The Vulcan groaned and rolled over. Jim shook his shoulder and spoke a bit louder, encouraging him to wake up and snap out of it.  
  
He shot up in bed like a flash, eyes snapping fully open with sudden, penetrating force. Jim stilled.  
  
For a while, they just sat there, waiting as Spock’s breathing slowed and he came back to himself. Jim curled up beside him and wrapped his arms around him. They stayed like that the entire night, eventually falling asleep while sitting up in Spock’s bed.

* * *

Spock had another nightmare. Jim noticed instantly, almost sensing the change more than feeling it. He just barely suppressed the urge to kiss him awake, reminding himself that he wasn’t allowed to do that, that Spock wasn’t his to kiss.  
  
He roused him gently through traditional means and Spock hugged him closer, hanging on like Jim was a lifeline.  
  
Spock didn’t cry, but it was a near thing.


	14. An Inordinate Amount of Kissing

“ _Attention, Coping Center patients! Breakfast has arrived on the unit. This is a reminder that we do not hold on to breakfast trays past a half hour, so please come out in a timely fashion if you want to eat.”_  
  
Jim groaned and nuzzled closer to Spock. Spock responsively hugged him tighter and planted a kiss on his temple.  
  
He immediately tensed and started to withdraw, realizing what he had just done. “I apologize, I—“  
  
“No, it’s okay,” Jim said, and brushed a kiss against his lips. Spock melted into it, and Jim smiled softly. “C’mon, let’s go get breakfast.”

* * *

Bones was gone before dietary came. Jim gave him a long hug that made several of the nurses uncomfortable, and he didn’t care.

* * *

They brought in a therapy dog.  
  
It was the world’s fluffiest golden retriever and she liked being petted and begging for treats. She ran around the unit for an hour, going up to various patients and all but forcing them to be happy. She took a ten minute nap on the bed beside an old person who hadn’t gotten up once since arriving on the unit.  
  
The woman actually sat up to pet the dog. She smiled.

* * *

A pastor came in and gave her weekly “nondenominational” spiritual therapy group. Jim went, mostly out of curiosity. The pastor talked about some Bible story but kept saying “or whatever higher power you believe in,” as if that made it any less overtly Christian.  
  
Spock came too, and Jim could only figure he had actually thought the group would be nondenominational and not completely about Jesus and what the Bible teaches, because he knew for a fact that Spock was Jewish. But he stayed and sat through the whole thing anyway, observing it as if it were a scholarly lecture on theology.  
  
They even offered communion, possibly just to ram home the fact that this was a Christian facility. Not with real wine, of course, given how many addicts there were in this wing.  
  
Jim refused it. Spock followed his cue, clearly confused as to what exactly was happening.

* * *

“So Spock,” Von said. She was using M’Benga’s office as if it were her own. “Do you feel that your mental state has improved since your arrival here?”  
  
“Marginally,” he said.  
  
“That’s great. Do you think you’ll be ready to go home soon?”  
  
“I believe I could leave today if it were permitted.”  
  
“Did you have a nightmare last night?”  
  
“…Yes.”  
  
“What was it about?”  
  
“I do not remember.”  
  
“Vulcans have an eidetic memory, Spock. You do remember,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about it, then that’s okay. You only have to say so.”  
  
He looked at her curiously. “Thank you.”  
  
“Who would you say your support system is?” she asked.  
  
“I do not comprehend your meaning.”  
  
“Who do you go to on bad days?”  
  
He hesitated. “Recently?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Jim.”  
  
“Would you say that you trust Jim?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Do you intend to keep in contact with him after you leave here?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Who else would you consider supportive of you?”  
  
“My father may technically fit that category. As well as perhaps Dr. McCoy.”  
  
“That’s good. It’s important to have multiple supports so you don’t end up in a codependent relationship. Is Jim just a friend to you?”  
  
He floundered.  
  
“You won’t get in trouble for saying no. I won’t tell M’Benga, I swear.” She smiled.  
  
“No,” he said. “I am inclined towards him romantically.”  
  
“Are you two together?”  
  
“It is ambiguous.”  
  
“Okay, I want you to figure that out and be able to give me a solid yes or no answer. It’s important to know where you stand with the people that you care about. Now,” she said. “What do you intend to do once you leave here?”  
  
“Resume my work at the Vulcan consulate and aid in the construction of the new colony.”  
  
“Did you find that work satisfying?”  
  
“It is necessary. What is necessary is always logical.”  
  
She cocked her head. “Why did you leave Starfleet?”  
  
He paused.  
  
She didn’t say anything else, just kept waiting for him. He kept expecting her to give up and ask a different question, but she did not.  
  
“I—“ he said. “I could not stay there any longer.”  
“Why not?”  
  
“It was too much.”  
  
“Emotionally?”  
  
“Yes,” he bit out.  
  
“What made it too much?”  
  
“Everyone… Everyone looked at me with pity. Nero stated that he had destroyed Vulcan because of me, because of my future actions. My people lost their planet because of me, and then I was not even doing anything to help rebuild. It was… intolerable.”  
  
“You left out of guilt,” she said.  
  
Spock didn’t reply.  
  
“Do you miss it?”  
  
“To miss something that was left voluntarily is illogical.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“…Yes.”  
  
“Which is logically more beneficial to your people: you working for your father or you working for Starfleet?”  
  
“Starfleet,” he said.  
  
“And which is more logically beneficial to you personally?”  
  
“Irrelevant.”  
  
“If it was truly irrelevant, you wouldn’t be here. So which is it?”  
  
“I do not know,” he said honestly.  
  
She nodded. “Alright. But do you think you could handle it? If you reinstated your commission?”  
  
“I do not know.”  
  
“Would you want to if you knew for sure that you could handle it?”  
  
“…Perhaps I would not want to be stationed back on a ship immediately.”  
  
“That makes sense. Ease back into it. There are desk jobs you can take at Starfleet, correct?”  
  
“Correct. In the past, professorial positions were offered to me at the Academy.”  
  
She smiled. “A teacher. That would be a great way to get back into the swing of things. Do you think that would be something you would consider doing?”  
  
“Possibly.”  
  
“That’s wonderful. Okay, well I think we’ve made a lot of progress today. I want you to think seriously about your future, and then I’ll check in with you again tomorrow. That sound good?”  
  
“Affirmative,” he said.

* * *

“Mr. Kirk, there is a call for you on the communicator,” a nurse said, handing him the device.  
  
“Okay. Thanks,” he said, taking it. “Hello?”  
  
“James Tiberius Kirk,” his mother’s voice oozed pure fury. “What the hell is all this about you getting Frank sent to jail?”  
  
He moved to a more secluded area of the day room and dropped his voice down. “I didn’t do anything, okay? It was all the social worker.”  
  
“He told me what the charges were, Jim! What sort of lies are you telling those people?”  
  
“Nothing! I told them the truth.”  
  
She scoffed, and it sounded tinny through the communicator. “You expect me to believe that? Frank has been nothing but good to you, Jim, and this is how you repay him? That man practically raised you!”  
  
“Yeah, and he did such a bang up job of that, didn’t he?” he snapped.  
  
“Are you seriously blaming him for this? Jim, you ended up in that mental hospital through your own damn fault. You have no one to blame but yourself. You can’t keep accusing other people of causing all your problems. What are you so depressed about anyway?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s not like you have any problems. You’re nineteen, for crying out loud! We provide everything for you. You don’t even have a job! What are you so stressed out about?”  
  
“I don’t know! Do I need a reason? It’s a chemical imbalance in my brain, Mom, it could happen to anybody.”  
  
He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.  
  
“Frank told me about his little deal with you. He said he offered to let you keep staying at the farmhouse as long as you sought help, and you refused. If you think I’m gonna keep supporting you with you acting like this, then you’ve got another thing coming, Jimmy.”  
  
“Don’t call me Jimmy. And that’s not what happened.”  
  
“Then what did happen?”  
  
“Frank wanted me to have sex with some people to pay off his debts.”  
  
“You’re still sticking with that story? I’m not some idiot social worker, Jimmy. I know you, and I know Frank. You expect me to believe that my brother— _my brother_ —actually said that to you? I would trust Frank with my life, Jimmy, and I know he’s saved yours and got you out of Tarsus alive. You should be more grateful.”  
  
Jim snapped the comm shut and gave it back to the nurses.

* * *

He was zoned out as fuck, staring at the ceiling above his hospital bed when Spock walked in.  
  
“Jim?” he asked. “What do you need?”  
  
“To feel something,” he said. “To feel real.”  
  
Spock sat down on the edge of his bed and placed a hand on his arm. “I am here.”  
  
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks.”  
  
He rushed up suddenly and pressed his mouth to Spock’s in a searing kiss, desperate and plundering. Spock put his hands on his shoulders and pulled back.  
  
“Sorry,” Jim said. “God, I’m—I’m shit. Sorry. You don’t—I’m sorry. I’ll keep my distance, I—“  
  
“You desire to harm yourself,” Spock said.  
  
He swallowed. “Yeah.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
He breathed shallowly, and traced a line up the length of his forearm. Spock repeated the motion, just a little bit harder, leaving a white streak on the skin but coming nowhere close to breaking it. He left a trail of kisses there, his tongue flicking out occasionally to trace along the line. He kissed all the way up to Jim’s hand and placed one last one on his knuckles like a Victorian gentleman, looking up at him through his eyelashes.  
  
“Describe your sensations,” Spock said.  
  
“I—I feel you kissing me,” he said. “I feel that line you drew on my arm. It’s—it’s warm. Hurt a little. Felt good. I see the light on the ceiling. I’m sitting on a hospital bed. It’s soft. Your hand is warm.”  
  
Spock nipped at his earlobe, and Jim closed his eyes. “You just bit my ear. It hurt a little. It felt good. Iagh—that feels good too. I’m—I’m here. I’m good now.”  
  
Spock pulled back and placed one last kiss on his lips, his eyes holding Jim’s like a magnet. He breathed shutteringly. He was real. He was here. This was happening and he could feel and he felt real.  
  
He should say something.  
  
“I’ve never—I’ve never been in a relationship before.”  
  
He should not have said that.  
  
Spock quirked an eyebrow. “Do you consider us to be in a relationship?”  
  
He felt very real fear punch him in the chest. Dissociation? Gone. “Uh, are we?”  
  
“I asked you first.”  
  
“Did you seriously just—“ he laughed. “Okay. Um. I’d like to be, if that’s cool with you?”  
  
“It is agreeable,” Spock said.  
  
“Great,” Jim smiled. He gave Spock one more tender kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last psych ward I was in was in a catholic hospital, which was super fun seeing as a huge part of the reason I was there was religious trauma. A pastor called me bitter for talking about it and one of the doctors said she was going to pray for me to stop being gay (because clearly I don’t get enough of that at home), which totally didn’t send me straight to my room to cut myself at all. The whole place was so pervasively mainstream Christian and the people there didn’t even seem to realize it at all. They did the standard “you were raised in a cult, you were brainwashed, you need to accept that your family will shun you now and prepare to never see them again” but also the contradictory “no that wasn’t /real/ Christianity, Christian cults don’t exist, keep an open mind and have you heard of this different church? :^)”
> 
> Loved it.
> 
> Also I have no clue how communion is viewed in mainstream Christianity so sorry if Jim’s actions are offensive to anyone I just figure he wouldn’t be all that religious?


	15. Discharge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I’ve finished this fic. It feels really abrupt to me, but I have nothing more for it planned, though I might write other stuff for this universe. Since I’ve started writing it, this fic has always had as many or more comments than kudos and I love how interactive it’s been, so I just wanna say thank you to everyone who’s commented and thanks for sticking it out with this fic!

“When can I be discharged?” Jim asked. “What is really being accomplished by keeping me here at this point? I’ve told you everything already. You’ve set me up with a therapist and a psychiatrist. My awesome uncle Asshat is in jail now. What else do you want from me?”  
  
“A plan,” M’Benga said. “Let’s say I did discharge you today. Where would you go? You haven’t even looked into the local homeless shelters, and you refuse to even consider a group home.”  
  
“I don’t need a group home,” he insisted, shaking his head.  
  
“Then do you want information on the homeless shelters in the area?”  
  
“No. I have a plan.”  
  
M’Benga leaned back in his overly-cushioned chair. “Then let’s hear it.”  
  
“I’m going to enlist in Starfleet.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what prompted that decision?”  
  
He shrugged. “It’s a good place to start over.”  
  
“I know a lot of other patients in the ward are or have been involved with Starfleet in some capacity. You aren’t just doing this because everyone else is, are you? This is a big decision. Enlisting is a commitment.”  
  
“No, I’ve thought about this, and this is what I want. I’ve always loved the stars. Just never thought that was for me.”  
  
“And why is that?”  
  
“Starfleet sorta fucked up my entire life.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“Well, I mean, my mom was never around because of them. She always loved the stars more than she loved me. And my dad died in the service. So that left me with no parents and Frank raising me.”  
  
“So why do you want to enlist then?”  
  
He licked his lips, tongue flitting out lightning fast. “Me and my mom are more alike than I’d prefer. Starfleet screwed me over as a kid, yeah, but damn if I don’t love space just as much as both my parents did. And I want off this planet.”  
  
“Jim, with this decision to enlist… Are you running to something or are you running away from something?”  
  
“Can’t it be both?”  
  
“I suppose. Are you sure this is what you want? There are other ways to get off of Earth and out into the black. You can work on a merchant or cargo ship, you can be a space shuttle attendant, you can get your pilot’s license and buy your own ship if you want.”  
  
“I know. I want this.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I’m an explorer.”  
  
“You can explore on your own.”  
  
“It’s not… It’s not like Starfleet is all bad. I mean, I guess I sort of sounded like I hated it, the way I was talking earlier. But… They did some good things too. On Tarsus, the check-up came early, when Kodos cut off all lines of communication. If it hadn’t been for Starfleet, I’d be dead. Kevin and Tom and Tamara and Angela would all be dead too. And I owe the ‘Fleet for that.”  
  
“So you’re doing this as your way of giving back.”  
  
“Yes,” he said.  
  
M’Benga eyed him, and nodded. “Well. As long as you know what you’re doing. I can have you enrolled in the Academy and discharged by tonight.”

* * *

“So Spock,” Von said. “What is the nature of your relationship with Jim?”  
  
“We are romantically involved,” he said.  
  
“And you’re both… aware of where you stand with each other?”  
  
“Affirmative.”  
  
“What are your plans after leaving here?”  
  
“I intend to reinstate my commission and take a position as a professor at Starfleet Academy.”  
  
“Are you and Jim going to continue to be involved?”  
  
“If he is agreeable.”  
  
“Find out, okay? And I want you to discuss how you’re going to make the distance work.”

* * *

They were playing chess.  
  
Jim moved a knight. Spock moved his queen.  
  
Pawn forward, capture with a bishop, return capture en passant.  
  
“So I’m getting discharged today,” Jim blurted out.  
  
Spock raised an eyebrow and faltered, unsure what to ask or how to word it.  
  
“Are we gonna…” Jim said, saving him. “Can I have your comm number?” He sounded horribly uncertain and vulnerable, even to his own ears.  
  
Spock nodded and reached for Jim’s notebook, scratching down his number with the tiny safety pen.  
  
“I believe I will be discharged in the coming days as well,” he said. “I plan to reinstate my commission with Starfleet.”  
  
“Really? I’m going to Starfleet too.”  
  
Spock arched an eyebrow. “Because of me?”  
  
“No. No, I’m serious about this. This is what I really want.”  
  
Spock nodded again, relieved. “Do you plan to enlist or go through the Academy to become a commissioned officer?”  
  
“The Academy. I’m gonna be a captain one day, just like my dad.”  
  
“An ambitious goal.”

“I’m an ambitious person,” he smirked. “What about you? Uh, what ship are you going on to?”  
  
“I will not be applying for a post on a ship immediately. I intend to serve as an Academy professor for some time.”  
  
A thrill of panic/excitement ran through Jim’s chest. “Because of me?” he asked, borrowing Spock’s question.  
  
“Negative. That was my intention before I learned of yours. It is an opportunity that has been offered to me several times in the past. Dr. Buteer believes it will be a satisfactory way to transition back from civilian life into the service again.”  
  
He nodded. “Good. Good.”  
  
Spock edged a rook to the side, and Jim danced around with his bishop. Mutual avoidance. It was a very unaggressive game they were playing. All defense.  
  
“So we’ll be in San Fran together,” Jim said.  
  
“Affirmative,” Spock acknowledged.  
  
Jim got out his queen. “Are we gonna stay together?”  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“As a couple. Are we going to stay together?”  
  
“If you wish.”  
  
“I do wish.”  
  
Spock’s lip twitched. “I am thankful.”  
  
Jim gave a breathy, relieved laugh. “So am I. God. So am I.”  
  
He thought he saw just the bare beginnings of a smile on Spock’s face and he surged forward to kiss it.

* * *

The nurse swiped her electronic keycard over the door lock and it beeped and whooshed open. She looked expectantly towards Jim.  
  
Spock took Jim’s hand in his own and brought his fingers to his lips, kissing them sweetly. “Tuluk tu vokau.”  
  
_You will remember._  
  
Jim smiled, and traced his fingers over his in the ozh’esta. “Veling.”  
  
_Of course._

* * *

 _ **Three years later**_  
  
Jim sat in the captain’s chair on the bridge, looking out over his hand-picked crew. He’d had first choice of any cadets he wanted, and while the Admiralty may not have understood his choices or his reasoning, he was sure in it. He wanted people he trusted. People who got it, who could handle immense pressure without breaking.  
  
“Warp factor one,” he called out.  
  
“Warp factor one,” Sulu said.  
  
“Mr. Spock, status report.”  
  
“All departments report ready and waiting,” he said. “Takeoff can commence at your command.”  
  
_All is well, ashayam.  
_   
He grinned up at his bondmate. _I love you._  
  
_Taluhk nash-veh k’dular isha._  
  
They weren’t perfect, but they’d be okay.  
  
“Engage.”


End file.
